Rights body asks police to add stringent Pocso sections

Kolkata: The West Bengal Commission for Protection of Child Rights (WBCPCR) has asked the police to add stringent sections of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) Act, 2012, against those who had tortured Swapnadip Kundu, the first-year undergraduate student who died after a fall from the second-floor balcony of the Main Hostel of Jadavpur University on Wednesday night.Speaking to TOI, WBCPCR advisor Ananya Chatterjee Chakraborti, who met Swapnadip’s parents, brother and maternal uncle at the latter’s Ranaghat house on Sunday morning, said Pocso was applicable in the case as Swapnadip was yet to turn 18 and he had been tortured and sexually harassed during the ragging session at the university hostel located outside the campus. Swapnadip would have turned 18 on October 31.“Swapnadip’s brother Ratnadip said he had called him hours before his fall and ultimate death and repeatedly said he was not gay. The seniors in the hostel — be they current students, former students or outsiders — had clearly harassed him on the issue of sexual orientation. He was also found naked on the ground after he took a fall. Pocso is most definitely applicable in this case,” she said.The former WBCPCR chairperson also learnt from his father and uncle that there were cigarette burns marks all over Swapnadip’s body. The family learnt about it while applying ghee on his body before consigning it to the flames in the early hours of Friday. “This fact should find mention in the post mortem report. If the family members have not mistaken the marks, and there is no reason to believe that they would have imagined them, Swapnadip was subject to physical torture, again a case of Pocso,” Chakraborti said.So disturbed was she after the visit that she then went to Jadavpur police station to speak to the investigators in the case to get an update and then visit the Main Hostel next door where the incident had taken place.“We have sought reports from police, university authorities and the governor as he is the chancellor. But instead of waiting for the report to arrive, I decided to check on the progress. JU authorities should explain why they had not segregated first year students from seniors to prevent ragging when all other major institutes have done it. It is also shocking that there are no CCTV cameras or even a register to note down who goes in and who leaves the hostel,” Chakraborti remarked.