Gujarati parents worried by spurt in ragging cases

AHMEDABAD — With as many as three ragging cases coming to light in famed residential educational institutions in Ahmedabad, Vadodara and Jamnagar in Gujarat, worried parents have decided to admit their wards in other schools and colleges.


While as many as 43 Class X students fled from an army school in Jamnagar after constant torture by seniors, first-year students of a government dental college here were subjected to sexual harassment by seniors and in the faculty of science in Vadodara's M.S. University, freshers have complained that post-graduate students forced them to sing love songs and narrate dirty jokes.

In the well-known Balachhadi army school, located 17km from Jamnagar and set up by the erstwhile ruler, Class XI and Class XII boys used to gatecrash into the hostel rooms of Class X, switch off their fans, woke them up and thrashed them with belts. When complaints to the principal yielded no result for five days, 43 of them escaped from the hostel and spent the whole night near a highway till villagers the police were told about a large group of youngsters roaming in the dark.

The boys were back in the hostel the next morning and the principal promised to punish the guilty but many parents still removed their children from the army school fearing revenge by the seniors.

In the dental college here, seniors used to force the juniors — who had begun their academic lessons only on August 1 — to perform 'striptease' dance and even ask them to make love with each other till the doctor father of a student complained to the higher authorities. Four senior students later tendered written apologies.

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