The Hindu : Front Page : Government to consider ragging victim's plea

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Nov 25, 2005

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Government to consider ragging victim's plea

Staff Reporter

KOCHI: The Government will soon take a decision on whether the nursing student who was allegedly sexually assaulted by her seniors at the School of Medical Education in Kottayam be granted admission in Thiruvananthapuram Medical College.

Education Minister E.T. Mohammed Basheer told a press conference here on Thursday that the next Cabinet meeting (on November 30) would discuss a request for providing financial assistance to the student for completing her academic programme.

The father of the student met the Minister here on Thursday and requested him to grant admission to his daughter in Thiruvananthapuram Medical College. He told the Minister that his daughter was not in a mental state to continue her studies at the School of Medical Education.

The Minister said that campus committees and a State-level committee would be set up to tackle ragging in educational institutions. The Principal Secretary for Higher Education will head the State-level committee as chairman and the Collegiate Education Director and the Technical Education Director will be its members.

The Principals of the respective institutions will head the college committees. The Principal will nominate one of the heads of departments to the committee as convener. The committees will have one woman from among the faculty members.

The Education Department will observe December 5 as Anti-ragging Day on all campuses. Counselling sessions and meetings will be held on campuses on the occasion.

The Government, he said, has no plans to ban politics on the campus. But the Government will never support violence in the name of campus politics, he added.

Achuthanandan clarifies

Special Correspondent adds from Thiruvananthapuram: Leader of the Opposition V. S. Achuthanandan has said that secrecy about the identity of the victim of ragging at the School of Medical Education (SME) under the Mahatma Gandhi University would have helped only the culprits.

Clarifying his stand on the issue at a news conference here on Thursday, Mr. Achuthanandan said he had had discussions with the girl and her father and mother to elicit information about the incident and taken it up with the appropriate authorities. Representatives of the media also accompanied him to the place where he spoke to the girl. Neither the girl nor her parents had any problem in interacting with him or the media.

The parents said they had decided to go public on the issue because they did not want any other girl to have the same experience, he said.

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