Durgapur, March 18: A first-year engineering student was allegedly beaten up by his seniors in Asansol Engineering College on Sunday for protesting against their drinking bout during an event to welcome freshers.

Azizul Haque Mondal, 19, was taken to a nursing home with injuries above his left eye and in his chest and abdomen.

His father Musha, a schoolteacher at Kotulpur in Bankura, lodged a police complaint against three second-year students on Monday morning and took his son home.

Police said the accused were absconding.

Around 9pm on Sunday, electrical engineering student Azizul and some of his mates spotted the three second-year students drinking in front of the college gate and protested.

The altercation ended with the intervention of some other senior students, but fresh trouble broke out around 10 when the trio stopped Azizul and two of his mates on their way to the hostel outside the campus.

The seniors wanted Azizul to accompany them, but he refused. “Then one of them pulled out his belt and started lashing me. He also wrapped the belt around his fist and aimed a punch at my left eye. I ducked and took the blow above the eye. I started bleeding and fell on the road. They kept kicking me,” Azizul said over the phone from Kotulpur, 120km from his college.

One of the attackers was wearing leather gloves with metal studs on the knuckles.

The senior students fled when some of Azizul’s other batchmates arrived. They took him back to the college and called the principal.

“The doctor who bandaged my eye told me not to remove it before a week and prescribed antibiotics and painkillers. There are gaping wounds over my eye that could not be stitched,” Azizul said.

Azizul’s father said. “I’m scared. I’ll have to think twice before sending him back to the college.”

Asansol additional superintendent of police Bastab Baidya said a case had been started against the trio.

First-year students boycotted classes today and demanded punishment for the seniors.

Principal Amit Kumar Aditya has ordered a probe. But he appeared to be trying to wash the college’s hands of the incident by saying: “It took place outside the campus when Azizul was returning to his hostel after attending the freshers’ welcome programme.”