As one walks past the arch-entrance of Government Nursing College in Kottayam, it is hard to miss the ‘Say No To Ragging’ posters plastered across the giant structure. Yet, the horrific torture of six first-year students—that went on unchecked for three months—unfolded right across the campus.
Disturbing visuals circulating on social media show a first-year student tied to a cot, being repeatedly jabbed with a geometry divider while his sadistic seniors pour lotion over the wounds. Another clip shows a dumbbell placed onto the wailing boy’s groin. There are more graphic videos—captured by the perpetrators themselves—now in the hands of police and the media. Police have arrested five students for the torture, which reportedly began in November 2024. They’ve been booked under the Kerala Prohibition of Ragging Act, as well as for causing hurt, criminal intimidation, and extortion.
This latest case of ragging—amounting to nothing less than third-degree torture—comes close on the heels of a ninth-grader’s suicide, allegedly due to bullying in a prestigious Kochi school.
In the last fortnight alone, two ragging cases were reported in Kozhikode, from MES College and the Government Medical College, leading to the suspension of 11 second-year MBBS students. Yet another case emerged from Kannur, where a plus-one student was ruthlessly beaten up by five plus-two students, leaving him with a broken arm.
The death of Sidharthan—a student at the Kerala Veterinary and Animal Sciences—last year is still fresh in the state’s collective consciousness, but the system has not gotten any better for it. If anything, there seems to be a clear pattern to these incidents, pointing to a deeper institutional issue in Kerala.
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Systemic issue
Kerala, with several ‘firsts’ to its name in literacy and other achievements, also took the lead in legislating a strong anti-ragging Act back in 1998. This followed a spate of ragging cases through the nineties, mostly from medical and engineering colleges across the state. The law may not have changed people’s attitudes, though. Patriarchy, moral policing, and indeed ragging have been long-standing issues challenging Kerala’s progressive streak.
The trouble with ragging is that it creates a vicious cycle. It is a well-known phenomenon and even psychiatrists attest that freshers who go through ragging as a rite of passage are more likely to perpetuate it. Many students who endure humiliation in the name of ragging carry that trauma right through adulthood.
Nevertheless, many in Kerala are conditioned to put up with it. There are enlightened academics who brush it off as an initiation and defend ragging practices as “good-natured ribbing”. Others qualify it as an “ice-breaker”, meant to “open up” freshers.
No wonder young men and women are increasingly keen to move out of Kerala to pursue higher education. Apart from better employment prospects, these students also put a premium on individual freedom and self-esteem—things that campuses in Kerala may not always afford them.
Campuses as Red Forts
The Left government in Kerala has belatedly responded to the brain drain by making a U-turn on its opposition to private and foreign universities establishing campuses in the state. But the move may have come too late as the flight of students abroad continues to rise every year.
On campuses across Kerala, banners declaring ‘Welcome to Red Fort’—put up by the Students Federation of India (SFI), the student wing of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)—are a common sight.
The SFI’s hegemony over universities and even private colleges is aided and abetted by Left teachers’ bodies. In the liberalisation era, the SFI has replaced the Confederation of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) as the primary recruiting agency for the CPI-M. Its politburo member MA Baby chose to describe SFI’s infamous state secretary, PM Arsho, as a “militant student leader” in an interview with me for ThePrint.
The Marxist party grooms its young comrades like circus monkeys on Kerala’s campuses to prepare them for bigger roles. That leaves the apolitical students who enter university with two choices—join the SFI for survival or fight the system. Come to think of it, aren’t campuses supposed to be democratic spaces? The politicisation of Kerala’s campuses leaves virtually no scope for youth to pursue their academic passions. No wonder Kerala isn’t contributing much to research anymore.
In the case of Sidharthan’s death in Wayanad, four SFI activists and office bearers were arrested. They allegedly tortured him because he danced with women students of their batch on Valentine’s Day, after which he hanged himself. The SFI’s role as the sole students’ outfit in the state’s universities was debated at length following the incident.
In the recent Kottayam incident, Malayala Manorama reported that members of the Kerala Government Students Nurses Association (KGSNA)—also affiliated to the CPI-M—perpetrated the torture of the first-year students. In fact, one of the accused, KP Rahul Raj, is the general secretary of KGSNA.
Lack of deterrent
At the Kottayam medical college premises, I met LK—father of the boy who underwent the torture seen in the video.
LK, who retired from the Indian Army in 2003, describes his son as a bright student who secured high marks in the tenth and twelfth board exams. He had already cleared the A1 and A2 German language tests and could have left for Europe, but instead, he secured admission to the General Nursing and Midwifery (GNM) programme in Kottayam under the merit quota.
LK lamented the lack of deterrents for students who commit crimes under the garb of ragging. The authorities often take a lenient approach toward students implicated in such cases. The lack of consequences for the perpetrators is clearly why such incidents keep repeating. There is a need to make an example of these student monsters, especially with ample visual evidence of their perversions circulating on social media.
That the perpetrators are students of nursing—a noble profession that calls for empathy and compassion—makes it all the more horrifying. Perhaps it is time for a campaign akin to the #MeToo movement to encourage more students to speak out against these ghastly practices across Kerala.
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Glorification of violence
Along with the system that makes light of ragging, it is also pertinent to examine whether such incidents are abetted by pop culture. The recent spate of violent films in Malayalam is a case in point. The glorification of crime and violence in films like Marco, Pani, RDX, Angamaly Diaries, and others may be rubbing off on impressionable youth. Aavesham’s hit song Illuminati, written by Vinayak Sasikumar, has a line that goes: “for he pulps your blood into sherbet.”
It might be a good time to revisit the Malayalam classic Amrutham Gamaya (1987), written by MT Vasudevan Nair with Mohanlal in the lead, which revolved around the menace of ragging in a medical college. Unlike back then, there is now a marked increase in the availability of psychotropic drugs and other intoxicants across Kerala’s colleges and schools.
But regardless of what the influences are, that ragging is a primitive and barbaric act needs to be drilled into the system.
Anand Kochukudy is a Kerala-based journalist and columnist. He posts on X @AnandKochukudy. Views are personal.
(Edited by Asavari Singh)
The Left modus operandi is the same across the world. In West Bengal they did the same. Every single college and institution of higher learning was controlled by the Left teachers and students unions. They did whatever they wanted to and got away with it. The police would never take any action against them. Rather, the police would often join them in their savagery against those who professed other ideologies.
Unfortunately, after Mamata Banerjee’s ascent ro power, the TMC replaced the Left and pursued the exact same strategy and tactics.
The situation is so dire that in West Bengal, if one has to avail of the hostel facility in any college, one must sign up to be a member of the TMC students wing. Without membership of the TMC students wing, hostel rooms are not allotted to anyone.