Justice N. Anand Venkatesh of the Madras High Court on Thursday, February 22, 2024 gave a piece of his mind to eight college students facing a criminal case for having ragged a co-student by tonsuring his head, beating him black and blue with a belt and locking him up in a hostel room for five hours because he refused to give them money to purchase liquor.
“What is the purpose of going to college if you will indulge in abhorrent acts such as ragging? It is better to remain illiterate and uneducated than indulging in such acts. There is no meaning in getting educated if you lack discipline. I really don’t understand what pleasure can somebody get by putting another person to misery,” the judge asked the accused.
When the students told the judge that it was a mistake and that they shall not repeat it any more, he asked: “What more is there for you to not do? You have already done great harm. Do you even understand how much of pain that boy would have undergone? What is the point in reading Tirukkural when you are in school if you are not going to follow it in our life?”
The judge also told the students to respect the struggle their parents undergo to get them educated. “Ragging is an inhuman thing. If a person is deriving pleasure by subjecting another human being to torture, it means he is suffering from mental illness. Youngsters must enjoy student life in a proper way not by indulging in ragging,” he said.
All the eight accused were present in the court with a plea to quash the First Information Report (FIR) registered against them. They claimed to have reached a compromise with the complainant who too was present in court. When the judge asked the victim whether he had reached the compromise due to any external pressure, he replied in the negative and expressed unwillingness to precipitate the issue anymore.
The judge interacted with the victim’s father too who told the court that the accused had visited his house along with their parents and apologised profusely. Therefore, in the interest of their future, he and his son had decided to give their consent for quashing the FIR. After hearing them, the judge quashed the FIR and said that a detailed order would follow soon.
It was also brought to the notice of the judge that the eight accused hailed from various places such as Madurai, Namakkal, Karur, Sivaganga, Theni, Ramanathapuram and Lakshadweep. They were studying together in an engineering college at Coimbatore and remain suspended ever since the Peelamedu police in Coimbatore city registered the criminal case in November last year.
The police had booked the case under various provisions of the Indian Penal Code as well as the Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Ragging Act, 1997.
