Hyderabad, Feb. 26: D. Naga Raju had just learnt that his 23-year-old son had been lying in a morgue for two months in another town, having left his hostel and got run over by a train.

When he landed up at the institute to ask why he hadn’t been informed, he was beaten up and paraded on a donkey and his humiliation videographed and circulated.

D. Suresh, who lived and studied on the premises of Super Whizz ? a private chartered accountancy coaching centre in Vijayawada ? died on December 27 on a railway track in Guntur, 30 km from the town.

Naga Raju, a government employee at Nagarjunsagar, learnt about the tragedy from a source in Guntur on February 22.

The next day, he arrived at Super Whizz with some of his colleagues to ask the management how they could have failed to notice that a student had been missing from his hostel and classes for two months.

Asked rudely to leave, the men sat on a dharna in front of the institute, demanding the management refund the hefty fees and pay Naga Raju compensation for letting his son die while he was in their care.

Naga Raju later told police that he and his companions were beaten up and that he was lifted onto the back of a donkey and paraded around the compound.

The management filed a counter complaint accusing the visitors of destroying the institute’s property. They also sent CDs of Naga Raju’s humiliation to all media offices in the town, with an accompanying note accusing him and his colleagues of smashing up furniture, the police said. The CDs, however, showed nothing of the alleged vandalism.

With the incident sparking demonstrations and road blockades by students’ organisations, the police quickly posted pickets at the institute. At a hurriedly called news conference, the assistant commissioner of police, M. Satyanarayana Rao, said five Super Whizz officials and employees had been arrested and cases registered against 10 people.

“The management had no respect for our grief,” Naga Raju said. “I had lost my son and his body had lain rotting for two months at the hospital for lack of identification. But the institute failed to inform us not only about his death but even about his absence from his hostel and classes.”

The hostel is run by a relative of a member of the Super Whizz management.

The state human rights commissioner, Justice R. Subhashan Reddy, has sent a notice to the centre. “We have given them three weeks to explain their action,” the former Supreme Court judge said.

District collector Naveen Mittal has ordered an inquiry.

Several educational institutions in Vijayawada have been involved in controversies in the past few years. The grieving parents of 17 children who had drowned during a school picnic were driven out by the management when they went to seek an explanation.

Two years ago, a computer science student, Manohar Prasad, stabbed classmate Srilakshmi to death at the examination hall after she spurned his advances. Last year, a school principal was arrested for taking nude photographs of class VII girls and blackmailing them for sexual favours.