Victim is studying at Al Qamar College of Nursing in Gulbarga, Karnataka.
By Sreekanth A. Nair
A 19-year-old Dalit nursing student from Malappuram, Kerala, has been admitted to the Kozhikode Medical College hospital in a critical condition after she was forced to drink a phenyl-based toilet cleaner at a nursing college in Karnataka as part of ragging.
The girl has sustained serious damage to her internal organs and her food pipe has been burnt. Though she needed emergency surgery, the doctors said that the surgery cannot be conducted for at least six weeks as it is very dangerous to carry out a surgery in her present condition, reported The Hindustan Times.
Media reports say that the girl hailing from Edappal, Malappuram, was forced to drink phenyl by eight Malayali seniors in the hostel of Al Qamar College of Nursing in Gulbarga. She vomited blood and collapsed after drinking the liquid. Then the senior students took her to a hospital in Bengaluru. Later she was shifted to a hospital in Edappal, but her parents took her to Kozhikode Medical College hospital as her condition deteriorated.
“They used to call us to their rooms and asked to do many things. Many of us were not obeying them and teased us. They didn’t even allow us to eat properly and close the windows at night. They didn’t allow us to leave home even during vacation. They forced us to drink toilet cleaner and put their fingers inside our mouth to vomit. Later, I was admitted to hospital and remained in ICU for 5 days in Bangalore,” the girl told Asianet News.
The parents and relatives of the girl alleged that the Gulbarga police refused to file their complaint against the senior students and took a stance in favor of the college management.
“We shifted her to Kerala last week. Besides police, the college management too tried to hush-up the case. Our first priority was to save her life … so we kept quiet. We were warned against speaking to anyone about this,” a relative of the girl told Hindustan Times.
The college management is saying that the girl consumed the lotion herself as she had some personal issues and so it doesn’t come under the definition of ragging.
Belonging to a poor family, the girl joined the college five months back with the support of an education loan. Several students from Kerala take up nursing colleges in the states of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka as the number of nursing seats are limited in the state.
The Kerala government has extended financial help to the victim and said that the matter will be discussed with Karnataka government to ensure strict punishment to the accused.