NAINITAL: All 27 first-year MBBS students of Uttarakhand’s Haldwani Government Medical College, seen in a viral “ragging” video with hands tied and heads bald, said they shaved off their hair due to “dandruff, skin allergy, and psoriasis” and not because they were pressured by seniors to do it.
Their statements were recorded by the anti-ragging committee and the disciplinary committee in a meeting held at the college.
Talking to TOI, principal Arun Joshi said: “Each student was asked 10 questions separately. All of them denied being subjected to ragging. We received no complaint.” On Saturday, a video of the students walking silently, with downcast eyes, in circles around the college had gone viral, with netizens asking the college administration to take action against “senior students”.
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To go with the version of the medical students, one has to believe in the strange coincidence that all 27 of them suffered from dandruff problems at the same time and all had the same solution to shave off their head. And this, when they are studying medicine. Incidents of ragging can leave impressionable youngsters with life-long mental and emotional scars. The management of the medical college should help the MBBS students come clean — with the truth and dandruff.
TOI had tried to reach out to students but no one was willing to make any comment. “All students gave eerily similar answers despite being questioned separately. How did all of them have dandruff and allergies?...this must be investigated,” said a college official.
This is not the first time that instances of ragging have been reported from the college. Seven MBBS students were suspended in 2019 after their juniors complained about being harassed. In 2016, an MBBS student complained to University Grants Commission that seniors “beat him”.