The police have confirmed that the incident is connected with ragging, but are not sure whether the student set himself ablaze or someone else did, as alleged.
An 18-year-old first year student of aeronautical engineering was allegedly set ablaze in the bathroom on Thursday night in his college hostel Bettahalasur Cross, 3km from Yelahanka Air Force Station on Bellary Road. The police have confirmed that the incident is connected with ragging, but are not sure whether the student set himself ablaze or someone else did, as alleged.
Hailing from Kerala’s Kannur district, Ajmal PM from Sha-Shib College is battling for his life with 60% burns in Victoria hospital. Preliminary investigation has revealed that Ajmal was constantly ragged by a group of four seniors who were his classmates as they had failed in several subjects. Last December, he had even stolen his mother’s jewellery worth Rs1.5 lakh and given it to them to escape further ragging.
Ajmal reportedly has told his father, a driver with a private firm in Abu Dhabi who rushed to Bangalore on getting the news, that he had smelt thinner (an inflammable mineral spirit) in the common bathroom. “I thought the cleaners might have washed the bathroom with the thinner and I went to have a bath. After a while the power went out, and when it returned, the room was on fire,” Harris quoted his son as saying.
The police, however, are confused. Though they are sure it was not an accidental fire, they have found out that the four have been in Kerala for a month now, and could not have set Ajmal ablaze.
But the general secretary of Kerala Muslim Cultural Centre said, “I too inquired with some of his (Ajmal’s) friends who had been to the bathroom. They said there was a matchbox there before the power went out. But after the fire, it was missing. This makes us suspect that someone set fire to the bathroom when Ajmal was inside.”
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