Aug. 23: A first-year student of Dinabandhu Andrews College has written to the principal alleging that she has been ragged by senior students, the complaint prompting education minister Partha Chatterjee to ask the institute to take action if the charge is found to be true.

The mother of the student, who is studying honours in a humanities subject, today handed the complaint to the principal of the Garia college on behalf of her daughter.

The complainant has alleged that the seniors forced her to drink beer yesterday afternoon and one of them threatened to throw an acid-filled bulb at her if she refused.

"My daughter was about to leave the college around 3pm when some senior girls called her to the union room. There, a senior who is a member of the Trinamul Chhatra Parishad-run students' union forced her to drink beer. We are treating this as an instance of ragging and have requested the college authorities to probe the complaint," the complainant's mother said over the phone.

The union room was packed with students when the complainant was called there, the mother said.

A relative of the complainant said a senior female student threatened her that an acid-filled bulb would be hurled at her if she refused to drink.

"Threatened with dire consequences, she had no option but to sip beer," the relative said.

It was unclear whether the student who had asked the complainant to drink was same as the one who threatened her.

Before the complaint was handed to the principal, the relative had brought the alleged harassment to the notice of the president of governing body of the college, Bappaditya Dasgupta.

Minister Chatterjee today met Dasgupta, a Trinamul councillor of Ward 101 of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation, and asked him to take up the matter with the college authorities.

"The minister asked me to pass on the message to the college authorities that action would have to be taken against the offenders irrespective of their party colour if the allegations are proved to be true," Dasgupta said.

He advised the student to lodge a formal complaint with principal Somnath Mukhopadhyay.

The student, in trauma since the harassment, stayed away from the college today. So, her mother met the principal and filed the complaint. The student's father works abroad.

The principal said the grievance redressal committee of the college would meet tomorrow to probe the charges. "The committee will recommend actions if the complaint is found to be true. We will then decide our course of action," Mukhopadhyay said.

The father of a first-year student at Techno India University in Sector V had lodged a police complaint on Monday alleging his son was being ragged over the past few months. The allegation is being probed.