Ragging surfaces at OU; Registrar denies

Despite the government takingstringent measures to contain ragging menace, incidents of ragging has not stopped coming. The fresh one seems to be from Osmania University campus. About 25 to 30 girl students of the University College of Engineering, OU have gone into depression, and threatened to discontinue their academics at the varsity accusing their seniors of ragging and harassment.

The issue surfaced when a first year student of the engineering college had called her father and told him that she wanted to quit the college and go home. Unhappy with his daughter’s decision, the private employee asked his daughter the reasons for her refusal to stay at university hostel and learnt about the ragging. According to sources, the ragging incidents have been taking place at the ladies hostel in the campus for the last 15 days and during past two days harassment by the senior students had reached threshold level.

The sources said seniors used to harass juniors by forcing them to bring fast food from NCC Gate, write their records, dance till midnight and late night calls to boys. Irony of the story was that ragging incidents happened in presences of the anti-ragging squad, which consists of students. Traumatised by the harassment, girls have threatened to discontinue their studies and return to their families.

Sharing the agony of his 19-year-old daughter, the victim’s father told The Hans India that he received a call from his daughter about two days ago. She was crying and repeatedly asking him to bring her back home. “When I asked her the reason, she said the senior girl students’ at the hostel were upsetting her and her fellow students,” he added. “About 30 such students of first year engineering course are living there. The senior students want the juniors to collect the addresses and mobile numbers of male students and furnish the same to them.

They are forcing the juniors to write records, entertain them at nights with dances and songs till 12 am,” said the victim’s father. Meanwhile, OU inspector V Ashok Reddy said the police did not receive any complaints from girl students regarding the ragging issue. “When I verified the departments concerned, they said they haven’t received any such complaint,” said OU registrar Prof E Suresh Kumar. It may be worth mentioning here that V Sainath, a first year student of CMR Engineering College, committed suicide accusing seniors of ragging. Despite a case of ragging already reported, the State government and University seems to have not learnt a lesson.