Santiniketan, Jan. 6: The shooting inside Ananda Sadan today laid bare the virtually non-existent security arrangements inside Visva Bharati hostels.

Smarting under humiliation of losing Rabindranath Tagore’s Nobel medal to burglars, the university today struggled to come to terms with the murder on campus.

According to students, several incidents of boys harassing girls have taken place on the campus and in the Ananda Sadan hostel over the years. Sleeping girls have been molested through open windows at night or accosted on the corridor but the authorities have not woken up.

“Scared of attacks, we keep our windows shut through the year,” said a Kala Bhavan student on condition of anonymity.

“Some outsiders had tried to break a window open one night. We repeatedly told the authorities to make proper security arrangements but nothing happened.”

Official complaints were lodged with the vice-chancellor, the chief security officer and the hostel superintendent last November about outsiders trying to break into the girls’ hostel at night.

Chief security officer Swapan Mukherjee admitted that “some outsiders had tried to create nuisance in the hostel” in November. He added that “precautionary measures had been taken” but the students saw none of it.

The minimum that could be done, posting a member of the university’s watch and ward unit at the entrance to the girls’ hostel, was allegedly not done. Mukherjee did not elaborate on what he meant by “precautionary measures”. Instead he said: “We do not have enough employees to deploy guards at the 22 girls’ hostels on the campus.”

Private security guards had been stationed at three checkposts on roads leading to Sriniketan, Bolpur station and Goalpara and at the entry points to certain parts of the university after the Nobel heist.