India: 120 minutes of intense ragging in hostel room leads to student’s death

Last updated on August 14th, 2023 at 06:04 am

In a shocking incident in the Republic of India, nearly 120 minutes of intense ragging in a hostel room of the Jadavpur University in Kolkata, West Bengal, led to the death of a first-year student Swapnadip Kundu. 

The police said on Saturday that the student faced intense ragging at the hostel on Wednesday evening. Subsequently, he died after falling from the second-floor balcony of the hostel room. Reportedly, Swapnadip Kundu faced intense torture before his death.

Reportedly, the first year student had to face “obscene comments, gestures and actions” from 8pm to 10pm. Swapnadip Kundu, a 18 years old first-year undergraduate student of Bengali (Honours), called his parents to ask for help. He called his mother on Wednesday evening and said, “You please come fast. I have lots of things to tell you.” When she called him back, he did not answer the call. Later on, she received a call about his son’s incident. The authorities told his parents that their son had suffered a fall. 

The student was taken to a hospital for treatment but he died. His uncle, Arup Kundu, said, “There were injury marks on his body. How does this happen if it was not ragging?”

Swapnadip’s father, Ramprasad Kundu, also filed a police complaint. He demanded justice for his son’s death. 

Swapnadip’s classmate, Arpan Majhi, also said on a Facebook post that Swapnadip faced ragging by “some seniors.” Some students from the Jadavpur University also said that students are forced to perform sexual acts, like stripping, during ragging by seniors.

The police have reportedly arrested three people: a former student of the JU who completed his studies last year Sourabh Chowdhury, Deepshekhar Dutta, a second-year economics student of JU, and Manotosh Ghosh, a second-year sociology student of JU, over their alleged role in the ragging. Kolkata’s police commissioner Vineet Goyal said, “We are trying to complete the investigation as fast as possible.”