An aspiring doctor’s death in Gujarat shows flaws in anti-ragging strategy

“They forced us to keep standing (for three hours)... A student who was standing with us fell unconscious. We rushed him to a hospital where he died,” a student said while describing what happened on the night of November 16. The exact cause of the death of Anil Methaniya, an 18-year-old first year student of the Gujarat Medical Education and Research Society (GMERS) Medical College in Dharpur, isn’t very clear presently. However, there’s little doubt that being made to stand for hours, sing and dance, being forced to drink water and then denied access to a toilet and the threat of being beaten up by seniors in multiple ‘introductory sessions’ over a month had a role to play in his untimely death. Fifteen students from the second year of the MBBS course at the institute have been arrested on charges of culpable homicide.“Preliminary findings suggest Anil Methaniya, who was exhausted, collapsed and suffered internal head injuries. However, the post-mortem will reveal the exact cause,” Patan DSP KK Pandya said. The 15 arrested students have been suspended from the course. The death of the aspiring doctor comes despite the fact that campuses across India aim to be ragging-free. There are anti-ragging committees, warnings against ragging, anti-ragging laws across states and undertakings signed confirming students’ support against ragging. But the Gujarat case only shows how many institutes have a long way to go when it comes to actively preventing such incidents. A farmer’s son, first doctor in family Anil was the youngest child in the family and the only son of his parents Natwar and Geeta. Natwar Methaniya owns 80 bighas of land. Anil had scored an impressive 545 marks in NEET on his first attempt. He was the first in the family to take up medicine.After his NEET results, the family chose GMERS over SAL Institute (his initial choice), believing in the government institution’s reputation — a decision that now haunts them. 115523449“The last we saw him was during Diwali festivities. He had attended (his sister) Nidhi’s engagement on October 20 and was very excited about her wedding scheduled for February. Anil was the youngest in the family and we doted on him. He had a bright future ahead of him. We are yet to come to terms with our loss,” said Dharmesh, a cousin of Anil.The family has demanded the harshest punishment possible for the students who are responsible for his death. “What kind of doctors will these youngsters make after causing the death of an 18-year-old?” said one of his cousins. Ragging that had gone on for days The seniors at GMERS allegedly forced Methaniya and 11 other first-year students to sing lewd songs and perform vulgar dances late Saturday night, all the while subjecting them to beatings. Screenshots of online chats that went viral reveal that the first-year students were called to different hostel rooms by their seniors.“First-year students were being called for introductory meets that were in fact ragging sessions. Around 150 students were categorised by their regional backgrounds and summoned for the sessions, which had been going on for around a month,” a source at the medical college said. Anil was part of the Saurashtra group of students. The juniors were allegedly forced to drink excessive amounts of water and denied access to a toilet for three to four hours. This form of torture can cause what is called water intoxication, which in its severe forms can cause seizures and even death. medium115523831Anil fainted after being made to stand for over three hours for failing to perform according to his seniors’ demands. Head injuries sustained during the fall are suspected to have resulted in his death.College sources claimed the senior students also tried to cover up the incident and did not immediately take Anil to the hospital after he fainted. The senior students also threatened the juniors against revealing the details of the incident to anyone, the sources said.Complaints but no action?The police probe into the death will also deal with whether similar incidents of ragging have been reported in the past and weren’t acted on. “We have information that such practices have been going on at the college for three years. We will speak to other students and faculty members to determine the extent of these activities,” a senior police official from Patan said.Dr Hardik Shah, the college dean and head of the institute’s anti-ragging committee, said he was unaware of ragging incidents. “Had the college authorities been informed about it, they would have taken prompt action,” he said.However, the senior police officer quoted above that the dean’s office had been informed about the persistent ragging. The apparent inaction by the authorities is also being investigated, he said. 115523504A student, on condition of anonymity, said that freshers had been warned against approaching college authorities.“We were told that if we approached the authorities, they would not only inform our seniors but also harass the complainants. It was not just one group that carried out ragging — there were six such groups, each representing a region of the state. The tragic incident occurred after five continuous days of ragging sessions,” a student said.One lapse that experts found is in the composition of the anti-ragging committee. The institute’s anti-ragging committee had no student or parent representatives, as mandated by the National Medical Commission.Notably, the medical college hostel had no warden or authorities who could come to the rescue of the students in case of an emergency. Nearly all senior members reside outside the district and the hostel just has one security guard, the students said.No lack of norms, but medical colleges do badly In the case of ragging there’s no lack of rules or laws on how to tackle it. The University Grants Commission (UGC) mandates the creation of an anti-ragging committee, advertisements across campuses and undertakings for students. There’s also an anti-ragging helpline for students that logs hundreds of complaints every year. However, incidents like Anil’s death raise questions about whether the measures are effective enough. As this TOI report points out, the number of ragging complaints received by the UGC from medical colleges is disproportionately high. Anti-ragging activists also point out that these complaints don’t always lead to adequate action. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r=0;r<e.length;r++)if(e[r].contentWindow===a.source){var i=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";e[r].style.height=i}}}))}();Within weeks of 2024 academic year starting on October 14, the anti-ragging cell has received over 55 complaints from medical colleges across India, which is almost 42% of total complaints received from all colleges. In 2024, of the 800 complaints received by the cell so far, 222 were from medical colleges and 230 from engineering and polytechnic colleges. In four cases from medical colleges, the victims died by suicide. The number stands out because there are just around 700 medical colleges in India compared to over 8,000 engineering and technology colleges. Anti-ragging activists said that UGC data doesn't even capture all incidents because students cannot register an anonymous complaint.In the Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College in Raipur, many first year students said they were forced to shave their heads by seniors. The college said it suspended five second year students for their role in ragging, but the college dean denied that multiple students were forced to shave their heads. "In the case of JLN Medical College, Raipur, though the complaint was registered, no action was taken by UGC or college authorities. This college is notorious for ragging and equally infamous for an administration that refuses to act. The authorities summoned the entire first year batch and asked if anything was wrong," said Rupesh Kumar Jha, of Society Against Violence in Education (SAVE), a non-profit that works on preventing ragging.Jha said that most complaints were made anonymously because if any student's identity was disclosed, seniors could mark him or her for even more severe ragging and abuse."College authorities take it as a personal attack on them and almost never act on their own. Instead of being thankful that students are informing them that all is not well in the college, they victimize the complainant,” said Prof Rajendra Kachroo, whose son died due to violent ragging in 2009. Another report has pointed out that fresh entrants in several medical colleges are being forced by seniors to memorise and read aloud from booklets filled with vulgar abuses, lauding sexual violence against women in general and their female classmates and nurses in particular, in the name of ragging. These ‘ragging’ sessions and booklets are described by experts in gender violence as a grooming in rape culture.The booklets in Hindi titled “medical sahitya” or “personality development programme” instruct freshers to memorise the content and keep copies with them at all times. According to freshers, they are forced to read aloud from the booklet and if they make mistakes or laugh, they have to start over. Isn’t there a law against this?A cursory look at the data from the US also reveals a struggle to control ragging in institutions, which is referred to as hazing. Many of the 50 deaths in the US caused between 2000 and 2021 were due to excessive alcohol consumption and injuries due to falls.In comparison, India’s university regulator revealed that between 2018 and 2023 there were 25 deaths recorded across Indian institutes due to suicide after ragging. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r=0;r<e.length;r++)if(e[r].contentWindow===a.source){var i=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";e[r].style.height=i}}}))}();Ragging exists in spite of the UGC norms and specific state-based laws that were passed to curb this form of harassment in educational institutes. Tamil Nadu was the first to pass a law in 1997 specifically against ragging which set the template for similar laws passed by Maharashtra, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir. All the state laws specify a jail term for those found guilty of ragging, dismissal from the institute and the guilty student being barred from admission to other institutes for a few years.All the laws also have a provision for administrators of institutes. They specify that administrators that fail to act on complaints will be deemed to have abetted the harassment and are liable to face the same punishment as students who carried out ragging. These laws are in addition to existing sections of law like those in the Bharat Nyaya Sanhita, which already specify punishment for causing hurt or abetment of suicide. One proposed solution to the problem of ragging is believed to be a new law to tackle those guilty. In the US, among the suggestions to target hazing is to involve students more in the campaigns. In India, many of the recommendations - made as far back as 2009 in the Supreme Court - to curb ragging remain only on paper in many institutes. Counselling sessions for students as they become seniors, counselling for students of the first year telling them what is ragging, anti-ragging squads in the college and other measures aren’t easy to implement fully, especially in public institutes that have tighter budgets and staffing. Private institutions might not have the same excuse. But rather than stricter - and more laws - it might make more sense to implement existing practices better. To try and make a bigger dent against ragging, the first step may be to listen to complaints and act on them seriously.