The far reaching impact of the death of a minor, a suspected victim of ragging at Jadavpur University, has prompted the Bengal government to mull stricter penal provisions in existing state anti-ragging rules with top sources in the education department confirming plans to amend the law as per recommendations of the Raghvan Committee report of 2007.

Sources also confirmed the state government’s plans to conduct surprise checks starting this academic session across all 37 universities under its fold to ensure all prescribed anti-ragging norms are duly implemented. A prominent display of the committee’s report on the higher education department website is also being planned for generating public awareness.

Besides designating ragging as an “act of human rights abuse” the Raghavan committee report called for “strong law against ragging with responsibility to prove not-guilty on that of the perpetrator”. The committee under former CBI director RK Raghavan was set up by the then ministry of human resources development in accordance with a Supreme Court order.

The West Bengal Prohibition of Ragging in Educational Institutions Act, 2000 was passed by the erstwhile Left Front government seven years before the Supreme Court ordered a crackdown on ragging at campuses in the country followed, subsequently, by the submission of the Raghavan Committee report. The law prescribes a punishment of imprisonment of up to two years and/or a fine of up to Rs 5000 of perpetrators found guilty. It also provides for dismissal and expulsion of students from their respective institutions if found guilty while barring their re-admission in that institution. The law also allows punished students to appeal before a state government-constituted committee for final redress of their grievances.

The law, which remains unamended, contains no provision of the stricter anti-ragging prescriptions of the Raghavan committee on account of it predating the submission of report and is, according to some senior officials of the state education department, virtually toothless in the face of the persisting menace in some of Bengal’s top campuses of higher learning. The incident at JU, according to them, has triggered the need for necessary amendments.

The state higher education department has already constituted a four-member fact finding committee to look into the alleged “administrative lapses and infrastructure gaps” at JU and recommend corrective measures to rein in the practice of perpetrating physical and mental torture of junior students by a section of seniors and indulging in lawless and illegal activities inside campus. The committee is mandated to submit its report to the department within two weeks.

“The state government has taken a very serious view on the unfortunate demise of the JU fresher and we are taking prompt and necessary action,” said state education minister Bratya Basu.

Confirming the department’s intentions to conduct anti-ragging drives in state-run universities, especially during the first few months after admissions are over, the minister added: “We are already sending the Raghavan Committee reports to the university authorities and asking them to abide by those and by the guidelines given by the Supreme Court.”

“It’s not possible for the government to curb ragging in campuses by itself unless the authorities do their necessary bit. We will keep the authorities accountable by all means at our disposal,” Basu said while hinting that the department is waiting for the Jadavpur dust to settle down before it initiates the planned measures.