Stripping And Sodomy In Name Of Ragging Highest In Telangana: UGC Report 

Hyderabad: Cases of sexual ragging on campuses of Telangana state are among the highest in the country. According to a report released by the University Grants Commission on Wednesday, the state stands only next to Karnataka, with 11 percent of students surveyed here reporting sexual ragging by seniors against the national average of only four percent.

Commissioned by the Supreme Court, the study 'Psychosocial study of ragging in selected educational institutions in India', was conducted by a four-member experts committee. As many as 10,632 students from 37 colleges/universities in the country participated in the study which found students in the state primarily being subjected to two kinds of sexual ragging — stripping and sodomy.

"The highest percentage of ragging involving stripping was reported from a private nursing college in Telangana (10.4 percent). Most common forms of sexual ragging are asking students to enact sexual scenes or narrating stories with sexual content," the study found.

Male Students Are More Affected

The other states that figured on dubious list were Maharashtra, West Bengal and UP. According to the committee, the menace was more prevalent among male students, those living in hostels and students enrolled in professional courses such as engineering, medical, nursing and hotel management. A 2016 case reported from the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad, stands as a testimony to latest findings.

Ragging based on region, religion, language, economic background and rural/urban background, were listed as the most common in Telangana. The percentage of students reporting adverse impact of ragging on their academic performance was found to be much higher than prevalence of ragging in the surveyed institutions. "This could be because ragging has been severe but not as widespread in the institution, or that mild forms of harassment have not been seen as ragging. It is also possible that atmosphere of fear and intimidation experienced by freshers in some colleges has an adverse impact even though they have not been ragged," the report states.

However, while students and professors admitted to lack of gender sensitivity on several campuses, they claimed that count of sexual ragging cases was an exaggeration. "We cannot deny that ragging is prevalent. But sexual ragging cases are much fewer when compared to other forms of ragging like beating, burdening them with assignments, etc," said a student leader at JNTU-H college.