Jadavpur University has decided to start a probe to find out whether the first-year postgraduate computer science student was forced to attend a kangaroo court in the university’s main hostel on Wednesday night, officials said.

The student, Biswajit Pramanik, had to be hospitalised after he suffered a suspected panic attack as a large group of students allegedly ganged up on him.

The student has since been discharged from the private hospital. However, he has not returned to the hostel.

The university decided to investigate the incident after the medical superintendent of JU, who went to the hostel on Wednesday night to rescue the student, gave her report to the vice-chancellor sharing what she saw and felt during the rescue.

The medical superintendent said she had reported in detail, among other things, how some hostel residents stopped her at two places while she was trying to take Biswajit away for treatment.

“The ambulance was ready. But we were delayed by the boys for around 40-45 minutes as they were not allowing me to take Biswajit out of the hostel. This has triggered concerns among university officials,” medical superintendent Mitali Deb told Metro.

“Whether ragging happened or not is not known to me or any of the JU officials. An investigation will unearth the truth and that will take some time. But if an on-duty doctor is stopped from doing duty, that will not be tolerated. The medical superintendent went to the spot with an ambulance. Preventing an official from discharging her duty is unacceptable,” Deb said.

She said she had recommended the installation of CCTV cameras in the hostel corridors and continuous monitoring of the footage.

Deb said: “I told the university to ensure that no student faces harassment in the future.”

Many on the campus said a full-scale tragedy could be averted because the medical superintendent and the hostel superintendent displayed the courage to visit the hostel.

In August 2023, when an alert reached the university’s dean of students that a first-year undergraduate student was behaving abnormally at the main hostel, no hostel superintendent dared to go to the hostel or rescue the student.

It later emerged that the hostel superintendents feared the hostel residents so much that they did not dare to go in.

The first-year undergraduate student, allegedly ragged by senior students in the main hostel, fell to his death in the early hours of August 10.

On Friday, JU registrar Snehamanju Basu said: “We are going to start a probe. A formal decision will be taken after consulting the vice-chancellor, who is now out of station. The university has received the report of the medical superintendent and taken note of what she wrote.”

When this newspaper spoke to the father of the postgraduate student on Friday, he said: “I did not lodge any complaint because my son did not want to. He is not in the hostel now. I don’t know whether he will return to the hostel.”

A JU official said the terms of reference of the probe committee will be announced on Monday.