Hundreds of students took part in a protest rally on the Jadavpur University campus on Friday, demanding a “ragging-free campus”.
Many of the protesters were first-year students of Bengali, who broke out in protest after one of their batch mates, Swapnadeep Kundu, died on Thursday morning.
Swapnadeep, who stayed in the main hostel of the university, is suspected to have jumped from the balcony of the hostel late on Wednesday. There are allegations that he had been ragged.
The protesters carried posters that had “Zero tolerance to ragging” and “We want a ragging-free campus” written on them.
The protest march, organised by the arts faculty students union, started from gate number 4 of the university at 2pm and ended in front of Aurobindo Bhavan, administrative headquarters of JU.
Police sources said around 500 students of the university had taken part in the rally.
“After the death of Swapnadeep, another first-year student posted on Facebook that he was forced to leave the main hostel because of ragging. This goes to show ragging is rampant at the main hostel. We have to bring an end to this culture. We don’t want more Swapnadeep to die,” said a first-year student of the Bengali department.
The protestors carried a banner with “We want justice for Swapnadeep, We want a ragging-free campus” written on it.
The rally went past New Boys’ Hostel, where all the first-year students who were staying in the main hostel have been temporarily shifted following Swapnadeep's death.
"The shifting itself suggests how much unsafe the first-year students were at the main hostel. What has happened with Swapnadeep could have happened to them as well. Ragging has to be stopped at any cost,” said a second-year undergraduate student.
Before the start of the rally, the students sat on the paver block in the car parking area on the campus.
They wrote posters which they circulated among other students.
“Swapnadeep’s mother received a call from him around 9.30pm on Wednesday. He told her that he was very scared. This clearly suggests he was harassed at the hostel. We have lost Swapnadeep because of ragging,” said a first-year postgraduate student.
The protesting students later raised slogans in front of Aurobindo Bhavan.
While they were protesting, the university’s internal complaints committee constituted to probe the death of the first-year student was recording statements of the hostel staff.
A protesting student said: “Had the hostel authorities acted properly, the death could have been prevented. We want all those responsible for the death of Swapnadeep to be punished at the earliest."
The students of several departments, including Bengali and English, did not attend classes on Friday as a mark of protest.
Manojit Mandal, head of the English department who was present at the start of the rally, said: “The presence of so many students reflects how the entire campus has reacted to the death and that ragging won’t be tolerated."