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Ragging victim lies immobilised from injuries while UGC consults police
Pasindu Hirushan, the 21-year-old ragging victim from Sri Jayawardenepura University, is awake and responding now but doctors are concerned that the right side of his body could be paralysed, his sister said this week.
Doctors ran preliminary response and memory checks on Hirushan assisted by his family, his sister, Shermila Silva said. “He is still in the intensive care unit (ICU) and under sedation day and night owing to the intense pain he suffers. But doctors were hopeful,” she said.
The family is preparing for a legal battle, with Shavindra Fernando PC leading the team representing Mr. Hirushan’s party. The case against six arrested senior students of the university was to be heard on March 23 but is likely to be postponed now due to the coronavirus crisis.
Pasindu Hirushan, from Kamaragoda in Minuwangoda, a past pupil of St Peter’s College, Udugampola, was severely injured on March 5 when a tyre rolled downstairs by seniors at a freshers’ party hit him when he was climbing the stairs.
The University Grants Commission (UGC), which has been powerless to stop ragging, said it had a zero-tolerance policy on the widely-condemned practice. “We are 100 per cent committed, not to the reduction, but to the complete eradication of ragging,” the UGC Chairman, Senior Professor Sarath Amaratunge, said.
The UGC met the National Police Commission and other senior Deputy Inspectors-General of Police to discuss possible action.
“This has become a crime of national impact and the UGC really does need help from intelligence [personnel],” Prof. Amaratunge said. “We can’t afford ragging of any form in our universities. We are responsible for each and every incident as it is the innocent youth who pay the price.”
There are increasing numbers of students coming forward with complaints through various safe platforms provided by the UGC, the Chairman claimed. The UGC online portal, an anti-ragging help app and a 24-hour hotline were some of these initiatives. They collect information from student complaints and share the information with the relevant university administrations.
Most students, however, said help from these platforms usually came too late. Kasun Wijeyaratne, a former student of the Advanced Technological Institute in Gampaha, experienced horrors as recently as 2018.
“Two weeks into our university life, the ragging begins,” he said. It ranged from sleep deprivation to stripping and 4am cold drenches.
“They made us harass the girls since they couldn’t get into their quarters,” Mr. Wijeyaratne said. He joined a group that tried to fight ragging. Multiple complaints to university administration were ignored. The freshers then reached out to the Veyangoda police who, they said, dismissed the cases without proper inquiry.
Mr. Jayasinghe was also a member of the group. He said students were often manipulated into joining the ragging. Seniors pressured most freshmen to enter certain boarding houses, creating a level of dependency that seniors later used to their advantage.
Mr. Jayasinghe refused these “helpful recommendations” as his parents chose accommodation for him.
He said forcing students, male and female alike – and many from conservative homes – to walk around in pants without belts was a common practice, to cause embarrassment when the unsecured garments fell down.
Freshers were made to recite lewd poems and forced to watch pornography in groups. Some students had to be hospitalised owing to extreme physical exhaustion from ragging. Mental trauma often went unaddressed and unnoticed Mr. Jayasinghe said.
His refusal to conform to the “Naiwala traditions” angered seniors. When he attempted to record ragging incidents a physical altercation eventuated, landing him in Gampaha Hospital. Some arrests were made, he said; those charged had been in remand for 56 days and released. The case is yet to be taken up again.
Mr. Jayasinghe suffered severe mental and emotional trauma. He was threatened for fighting back. He left the university system and is now working at a studio.
Kasun Wijeyaratne too dropped out of university and the food science course he was pursuing after the enraged seniors who had targeted him were released. He is taking a nursing course now because he says he has no other option.
While the UGC claimed that only 5 per cent of students engaged in ragging, interviews carried out by The Sunday Times reveals the reality is close to 70 per cent.
Most incidents of ragging are not tried under the Prohibition of Ragging and Other Forms of Violence in Educational Institutions Act, Shermila Silva said.
“If the law dealt with these perpetrators with severity under the anti-ragging act, then others would be deterred from committing the same crime,” she said. The UGC chairman had expressed similar sentiments in the past, but words provided no relief to the victims.