Prone on his bed with a broken leg and extensive head injuries, 19-year-old Ashumendra Pratap Singh has trouble recognising his family and friends. After a serious bout of ragging, this fresher from Kolkata’s Indian Institute of Hotel Management (IIHM), has ended up in a Kanpur nursing home.

Doctors at the Chandrakanta Nursing Home at Civil Lines, where he is admitted, say the head injuries have left him mentally disturbed. His family, whose pleas have gone unheard at the institution, now want action against the guilty

A resident of Fatehpur, Ashumendra had got admission at the Indian Institute of Hotel Management (IIHM), Kolkata and joined the college on June 13. “The ragging started soon after,” said his mother Kusum Singh.

Her son even complained to the college authorities, but the management took no action, she said. Matters came to a head on June 25, when senior students tried to force Ashumendra to consume alcohol and non-vegetarian food. When he refused, he was thrashed. “He sustained serious injuries on head, legs and abdomen,” she said. The miscreants then took the youth and left him on the railway tracks near Sealdah railway station.

Accusing the institute authorities of negligence, she said, “they informed us two days later, on June 27.” Moreover, all they said on telephone was that Ashumendra was “missing from the institute”.

Ashumendra’s uncle IB Singh and another relative, SS Chauhan, left for Kolkata. Chauhan told The Indian Express that they reached the Vidhan Nagar police station on June 30 and registered a missing report.

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