A 19-year-old nursing student is battling for life in a Kerala hospital after her seniors in a college near Bengaluru forced her to drink toilet cleaner, reports said.
Doctors reportedly said her condition remained critical as the phenyl lotion burned her food pipe and internal organs. Although she needs a surgery immediately, it cannot done for at least six weeks because of the internal damages.
The incident, reports said, happened two weeks ago. The teenager, a dalit from Malappuram in north Kerala, was reportedly ragged by eight of her seniors, who are said to be from the same state. Reports said she felt queasy and vomited after consuming the liquid. After a few hours, her condition deteriorated further and was rushed to a hospital.
Her parents, who brought her back to a hospital in Kerala a few days later, accused the college authorities and the police in Karnataka of ignoring their complaints.
We shifted her to Kerala last week. Besides police, the college management too tried to hush-up the case. Our first priority was to save her life…so we kept quiet,” a relative said. “We were warned against speaking to anyone about this.”
Reports said the girl allegedly has been facing constant harassment from seniors since her joining the Al Qamar College of Nursing in Gulbarga.
Meanwhile the college authorites maintain that she drank the cleaning lotion herself as she was facing some familial problem. “Since it is not a case of ragging, we haven't taken any action against the seniors,” a spokesperson for the college told media.
