A first-year undergraduate student of Jadavpur University was allegedly ragged in the varsity’s main hostel hours before he died in a private hospital close to the campus on August 10, 2023.

A year later, JU, which in its probe identified students who had ragged the first-year student, is yet to take any steps apart from issuing show-cause notices to some of the accused.

The father of the deceased boy said all that JU could do in this time was to issue show-cause letters.

“JU show-caused the students implicated in the committee report, that too only after the education minister Bratya Basu in late July said he would speak to the JU authorities about the inaction. We don’t know when JU will announce the punishment and we will get justice,” the father told Metro on Friday.

The JU vice-chancellor, who took charge in April, said he would not comment on something that happened before he assumed office.

“We are awaiting the reply to the show cause. Then we will decide on the course of punishment,” said interim VC Bhaskar Gupta.

The student was allegedly thrown off the second-floor balcony of JU Main Hostel by seniors after being ragged in the late hours of August 9, 2023. He died early the next day.

An anti-ragging committee report, which was submitted to the JU authorities in December 2023, said five residents of the main hostel who were “present” during the ragging, “may be rusticated for four semesters and expelled from JU hostels permanently”.

It recommended that 25 hostel residents be rusticated for one semester and expelled from hostels permanently as they were “directly associated with abetment to ragging”.

JU on July 30 issued show-cause letters to the students, two days after the minister Basu said he would speak to the authorities.

“The show cause should have been wrapped up much earlier... As the university is taking time to act, complaints of harassment of students keep emerging from the same hostel. A postgraduate first-year student had to quit the hostel recently,” the father said.

A first-year postgraduate computer science student of JU on July 25 night had to be hospitalised after he was allegedly harassed and humiliated in a “kangaroo court” in the main hostel.

“I have returned to Purulia. I am not sure when I will return to the campus. My parents don’t want me to return to the main hostel because they are worried about what I had to go through,” said the student, Biswajit Pramanik.

JU has constituted a committee to probe the complaint.