Action will be taken on Nepali student’s death: Odisha govt

Bhubaneswar: The Odisha government on Saturday said all those responsible for the death of a Nepalese student of a private engineering institute KIIT and the alleged assault on students from the Himalayan country would not be spared. The Congress activists also held a demonstration, demanding the immediate arrest of KIIT founder Achyuta Samanta.

A large number of youth and student activists of Congress staged the protest before the main gate of Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology (KIIT) and burnt effigy of Samanta.

A scuffle broke out between the security personnel and the agitators when Congress workers attempted to barge into the KIIT campus. The Congress activists held the demonstration a day after the party MLAs in the Assembly demanded a judicial inquiry into the death of a 20-year-old Nepalese student and subsequently, the alleged attack on students from the neighbouring country.

Odisha’s Higher Education Minister Suryabanshi Suraj, however, said the State government was committed to taking stringent action in the KIIT incidents. The government is waiting for the findings of a high-level committee, he said, adding that eight top functionaries of KIIT, including its founder, have deposed before the government panel and recorded their statement on the incidents. “Based on the findings of the committee, the government will initiate action,” Suraj said. The police are also investigating the matter and at least 10 persons, including bouncers, security guards and other officials of the institute, have been arrested so far, the minister said. He said the police took action based on the evidence from the CCTV footage.

Referring to the death of the female student, the minister said one person has been arrested on the charge of abetment to suicide and police have been verifying his involvement in harassing the student. “The police have sent a viral audio clip for the voice spectrograph test to ascertain its authenticity,” the minister said, adding that if found true, a case under IT Act will also be framed against the accused.

Senior Congress leader and former Odisha chief secretary Bijay Patnaik, at a press conference here on Saturday, alleged that there was “racial discrimination” among students at KIIT as the Nepalese students alone were evicted from the campus. The private institute’s staffers also used insulting words against Nepal, which has close ties with India, he claimed. Bijay also wondered about the alleged “silence” of the University Grants Commission (UGC) or the Central government over the KIIT incidents. “The KIIT should immediately be issued a show cause notice asking it to explain why its ‘Deemed to be University’ status would not be withdrawn for the racial and discriminatory activities,” he alleged. Stating that the KIIT incidents have earned a “bad name for the State”, Bijay said foreign students and their parents will henceforth think several times before sending their wards to study in Odisha. “One special cell should be opened at the Governor’s house here for receiving complaints from foreign students,” he said.

Bijay alleged that the KIIT founder was a BJD MP and therefore got patronage from the previous government. “Now, the KIIT incident has come as a challenge for the new BJP government to prove that it is different from the BJD dispensation,” he added.