Journalism of Courage
Sambalpur Police have dispatched a team to Visakhapatnam after an engineering student from Odisha succumbed to injuries allegedly due to ragging by fellow students in an engineering college there.
On December 26, Shreyas Kesharwani had allegedly received repeated blows to the chest, for which he received treatment earlier at Rourkela and then in Bhubaneswar. He died on January 6.
Locals in Shreyas’s village — Garposh in Sambalpur district — had launched a major agitation and stopped trains passing through the area. The villagers have demanded strict action against the college administration and a compensation of Rs 1 crore.
“We have sent a fact-finding team to Visakhapatnam. We will pursue the case now and transfer the case to Visakhapatnam Police”, said Sambalpur SP Sanjeev Arora.
The victim’s family alleged that the college administration did not act against previous ragging complaints. Shreyas was threatened by the perpetrators not to disclose the incident but his family claims to have recorded a video, where the victim has named four perpetrators.
BJD MP Baijayant Panda had tweeted to Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar to take stringent action against erring educational institutions. “This is unconscionable. Despite many similarly shocking incidents of #ragging deaths, this scourge continues shamelessly. @PrakashJavdekar kindly take stern steps. If you derecognise one or two such colleges, the administrators of all others would get the message.”
