UGC flags institutional failures in Dharamshala student suicide

A University Grants Commission (UGC) fact-finding committee probing the death of a 19-year-old student at a government college in Himachal Pradesh’s Dharamshala has flagged “serious institutional failures”, including absence of statutory bodies and lack of student support systems, according to its findings.

- Sanjay Maurya

The panel found the student was “disowned by stakeholders”, and the college principal Rakesh Pathania came to know about the incident through social media with no outreach even after a police complaint, according to the findings submitted to UGC in the last week of March. HT has seen a copy of the panel's submission to the commission.

UGC had on January 3 constituted a five-member fact-finding committee to verify college's compliance to its regulatory norms on students safety and examine the circumstances surrounding the death of the student on December 26. Based on a complaint filed by the victim’s father, three students of the college were booked on charges of ragging while a teacher was booked for sexual harassment on January 1. On February 17, a Dharamshala court granted anticipatory bail to all three of them.