by Tahir Bhat and Junaid Bhat
SRINAGAR: After the students of a medical college in Bangladesh resorted to a strong protest, the management has cancelled the suspension of a Kashmiri student, reports reaching from Dhaka said. The student had been suspended from the college and he made two suicide bids on his life.
It all started with a football match between the Kashmiri students and the locals on December 16, 2021. The match was played between two different batches of the same college. It was IMC 18 versus the Interns of the same college. “There was some issue and two students exchanged verbal duels, one of them a Kashmiri” one student, who wishes to remain anonymous, said. “The issue was about sports and it was settled on the ground, there and then.”
After many days, the management of International Medical College in Dhaka periphery issued a notice to the Kashmir student (name withheld) suspending him for six months. The notice was issued on January 26, 2022. This involved the local Kashmiri student community that approached the management but they failed to get any relief to their classmate. They pleaded before the management that the issue pertained to a football match and it was settled on the pitch itself so there was no need to bring the mess to the classroom and academics.
“Last night, we were about to have our dinner at around 10 pm, there was a commotion around with students pointing towards a room. We rushed to the room and found this young boy hanging with the ceiling fan in his room,” the student said. “We had to break open the door and he was saved barely by seconds.”
Owing to the Covid19 crisis, the students were restricted to their hostels and are preparing their own food.
The student was rushed to the college hospital. Almost 12 hours later when he regained consciousness, he used the oxygen pipe to kill himself again.
It triggered a crisis for the students. “We finally resorted to a protest today and finally the college management came out and assured us that his suspension will be undone,” the student speaking from Dhaka said. “They also assured us that there will not be the repetition of the same in future.”
Another classmate of the student said that the internee with whom the boy had an altercation was also at fault. “He had abused him during the football match. The management took no action against him. They acted partially. They always tend to overlook the fault of Bengali students while Kashmiri students are given proportionately severe punishments, even for minor faults.”
The student said that in order to show that they had taken action against both sides, they gave extension to Bengali students but that was unrelated to the current issue. “They tried to draw a correlation to give it a semblance of impartial treatment to both sides,” the student said.
Police had come to the spot and assured the agitating students that they will talk to the management and solve the issue.
Early this month, it may be recalled here, a female medical student from Budgam, Seema Zehra, also enrolled in a Bangladesh medical college died in mysterious circumstances.
In 2019 also, a female student, Qurat-ul-Ain, a resident of Dialgam, Anantnag was found dead at Tairrunisa Memorial Medical College in Ghazipur, Bangladesh.
