“Scared, Come Fast”: Jadavpur Student Told Mother Hour Before Fatal Fall

Kolkata:

The student who died after falling from the second floor of a hostel in Kolkata’s Jadavpur University had called his mother barely an hour before the incident and told her he was scared. He had pleaded with his mother, who lives in a town 100 km away, to “come fast” and said he had lots to tell her. 

The family and a classmate have alleged that the 18-year-old was a victim of ragging. 

Swapnadip Kundu was a first-year undergraduate student of Bengali (Honours) and had fallen from the balcony of the main hostel building in the university around 11.45 pm on Wednesday. He was taken to a hospital, where he was declared dead at 4.30 am on Thursday. 

“Swapnadip spoke to his mother on Wednesday evening. He told her he was not feeling good and was feeling scared. His mother asked him what had happened. He said, ‘You please come fast. I have lots of things to tell you’. Then she called him back, but the phone kept ringing and he did not pick up. About an hour later, his parents got a call asking them to go to Kolkata as their son had suffered a fall,” said Swapnadip’s uncle, Arup Kundu

“The body was completely covered but the doctor showed me a piece of paper which indicated injury marks on his body. How does this happen if it was not ragging,” Mr Kundu asked. 

Swapnadip’s father, Ramprasad Kundu. has complained to the police saying some of the boarders of the hostel are responsible for his son’s death. A Facebook post by one of Swapnadip’s classmates, Arpan Majhi, also pointed to ragging by “some seniors” and said he had lost his classmate because of a few of them, a report by news agency PTI said. 

The police have not commented on the investigation and Jadavpur University has also remained tight-lipped.  West Bengal Governor CV Ananda Bose, however, met the student’s parents at the university campus on Thursday. He assured them of stern action against those responsible and said that the family would get justice. 

Residents of the Kundus’ hometown, Bogula in Nadia district, held a protest today, demanding a proper investigation into Swapandip’s death and strict action against the people responsible for it. 

In October last year, IIT Kharagpur student Faizan Ahmed was found dead in his hostel room. While it was passed off as a case of suicide, the family, which is from Assam, had moved the Calcutta High Court claiming it was a case of ragging and murder. 

A second post-mortem was done this year after exhuming the body on the orders of the high court. The autopsy report referred to injuries sustained before death and said they were homicidal in nature. His family had told the court that he was pushed over the edge by ragging and that his complaints had gone unheard by IIT-Kharagpur’s management.