Victim of ragging mostly rags a junior: HC Justice Gambhir

New Delhi, Jan 7 (UNI) Terming ragging a ''venomous practice'', Justice Kailash Gambhir of the Delhi High Court noted that a person who ragged a junior must have been a victim of ragging himself.

''When a person gets ragged, its germs are sown inside him which bounce back when he becomes a senior,'' Justice Gambhir said and added that ragging was violation of human rights that distorted mental balance of the victim to an unimaginable extent.

He was speaking on a launch ceremony of a book entitled ''Ragging - The Red Alert'' held here recently.

He added that ragging was no more a means of interaction but more of teasing and humiliating juniors that distorted the balance of an individual.

Judge of the Delhi Consumer Court Dr Premlata, who was also present on the occasion, asserted that there was a need to go to the root cause of the problem.

''Today's youth is aggressive. They get sadistic pleasure in teasing somebody. We have to be concerned about the emergence of this behaviour,'' she said.

Talking about his inspiration to right the book, its author Gulshan Naveen said the sad demise of Aman Satya Kachroo, who died in March last year due to intense ragging by his seniors in Himachal Pradesh, made him to raise his voice against the evil.

''The character of ragging is becoming downright criminal. Today's raggers are learning from various sources and beginning to indulge in atrocities of the kind inflicted on prisoners confined in Guantanamo Bay!,'' Mr Naveen said.

The country has not been dealing with a simple law-and-order problem but a cancer that was degrading the society, he added.

Father of Aman and head of an NGO, Aman Movement, established to work towards eradication of ragging, Dr Rajendra Kachroo also attended the function.

The book gives various circulars of UGC, AICTE as also deep intervention of courts, including the Supreme Court of India. It refers to the possibility of an increase of virulent events in technology education institutions and suggests that present college education has a deficiency in liberal education.

''Educational institutes need to move in a direction to provide more of practical knowledge to students instead of delivering lectures on morality and good behaviour,'' the book mentions.