Police probing a complaint of ragging filed by a now-dead IIT Kharagpur student have slapped charges of criminal intimidation and causing disappearance of evidence on five students and two employees, according to an FIR registered at Kharagpur Town police station.
The superintendent of police, Paschim Medinipur, Dinesh Kumar, said an investigation had been initiated in the case.
A senior officer of Paschim Medinipur police said of the five students, four have been charged with ragging Faizan Ahmed, the student who died.
One student has been charged with being instrumental in deleting a Facebook post in which some of the IIT students had purportedly said Faizan had been subjected to humiliation for refusing to take part in ragging in a hostel.
The police have charged the then warden and assistant warden of the RP Hall of Residence with “knowing about the ragging but not informing the police about it”.
The FIR mentions IPC sections 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 506 (criminal intimidation), 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of an offence or giving false information to screen offender), 188 (disobedience of order duly promulgated by a public servant) and 34 (common intention) against the five IIT students and two employees, said the senior police officer.
Sources said four of the students named in the FIR stayed in the RP Hall of Residence, where Faizan Ahmed used to stay before he shifted to LLR Hall of Residence.
“These students went to Faizan Ahmed’s room and forced him to join the assimilation programme at the RP hall and verbally abused him. They acted in violation of the IIT rules which say that participation in the assimilation programme was voluntary. They were involved in snatching the victim’s phone,” said an officer who is part of the investigation team.
Faizan’s family has filed a writ petition in Calcutta High Court alleging that he was murdered by senior students and they have termed the assimilation programme as a “glorified version of collective ragging”.
Lawyer Aniruddha Mitra, representing Faizan’ family, had alleged on November 5 in writing to district police chief Dinesh Kumar that a Facebook post and related comments on “IIT KGP confessions 3.0” had been deleted “after the hearing of the writ petition”.
“This student (the fifth student) had called up the admin of the page and asked (the person) to delete a post that gave a detailed account of how Faizan was ragged. According to the admin, (the person) did as asked without going through the content of the post,” said the officer.
Two employees have been named in the FIR.
“The former warden was the recipient of Faizan’s complaint letter. He then forwarded the same to the assistant warden. But neither reported it to the police,” the officer said..
