OHRC directs police to establish a helpline number to help ragging victims
OHRC directs police to establish a helpline number to help ragging victims
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Bhubaneswar: The police have been instructed by the Odisha Human Rights Commission (OHRC) to establish a helpline number to assist students who are victims of ragging in the state's higher education institutions.
Following the filing of several petitions against ragging by Tejeswar Parida, the convener of the Ragging Free Campus Abhiyan (RFCA), the OHRC has made an interim recommendation to the Director General of Police. To stop the threat, Parida had asked the state government for precautionary measures.
The OHRC order stated, according to TNIE, "The commission is inclined to make an interim recommendation to the DG and the IG of Police, Odisha, for setting up an anti-ragging 24 hours a day, seven days a week helpline number in the Human Rights Protection Cell to effectively curb the menace of ragging."
The OHRC further mandated that its organisation look into allegations of racial harassment against an ANM student who was living in a training facility on the Deogarh district headquarters hospital site. It ordered the police to turn over the records to Additional DGP (OHRC) so he may investigate and provide a report within a month, calling it "extremely alarming."
The next hearing on the suicide of a BJB College student in Bhubaneswar, reportedly brought on by ragging, has been scheduled for August 29. The OHRC has received the Police Commissioner's report on the incident.
