A case of news story on ragging in Goa college
‘There is a complaint of a ragging case in Goa Dental College (DMC). The victim girl is ready to speak. Rush to Mapusa along with a photographer.’ Bikram Vohra, Editor of The Navhind Times, said this to me as soon I entered the newspaper office. I immediately left Panjim for Mapusa.
I had joined as a reporter for Panjim-based The Navhind Times in 1981. Later I registered for the M. A. (Philosophy) course of the Bombay University. (Goa University was founded a couple of years later.) Since I was still a student, the editor had allotted to me the beat of a campus reporter along with the crime-court beats.
That was the reason the newspaper editor had sent me to the girl's house in Mapusa to report on the ragging case at the dental college.
Forty years after this incident, now I faintly recall that the complainant girl's house was located at the foot of Altinho (a hillock in Portuguese) in Mapusa. When I reached her home, the girl's father received me. After casting a glance at the living room, I realised that the family was pretty rich.
As soon as I handed over my visiting card, the girl's father introduced himself and gave me his own visiting card. Petkar, a lawyer, was a standing counsel for the Central Government. He immediately explained to me that he was authorised to represent as a lawyer the Union government in cases involving the Union government.
Although I regularly attended hearings at the Panjim bench of the Bombay High Court as a Crime and Court reporter, I was hearing of this designation for the first time. I now knew that the thick volumes of books in the built-in wall cupboards in the living hall were law books.
Petkar briefed me on the case until the tea and biscuits arrived at the table. He said his daughter, who was in her first year at the Goa Dental College in Bambolim, located eight to 10 km from Panjim, was being ragged by her seniors for the past few days and that the girl was ready to talk to me about it. As a lawyer, he was careful about all the legal issues in the case, he explained to me. Soon after, his daughter came out of the inner room and sat on the sofa next to her father in front of me.
My interview as a reporter now began. My questions started pouring in.
Who were the persons involved in ragging? What were the methods of ragging and how many days was this trouble going on? Has she reported the matter to the teachers or the college authorities?
This incident dates back to the 1980s when there were no separate laws or regulations related to ragging. Till that day, I had never heard of ragging complaints or newspaper reports related to ragging cases. Nonetheless, I was asking my questions from the perspective of a crime reporter –crime and court were the additional twin beats I covered.
While answering the questions, the girl often stumbled and kept on looking at her father for help. Her lawyer father would come to the rescue of his daughter, and just as she was completing half the sentences herself, he was providing additional information. I was directing my questions back to the girl and Petkar, as a seasoned lawyer, would strengthen his daughter’s position by providing more details about the ragging.
When I arrived at The Navhind Times office with details of the ragging as given by the girl and her father, the editor immediately summoned me to his cabin. Instinctively, I knew that the ragging case would be a major story in our newspaper’s next edition (the term ‘Breaking news’ was not common during those days).
‘Yes Camil, tell me what’s the story?’ Editor Vohra asked me as he drew with his left hand pictures of aeroplanes on the notepad on his desk. During those years, Vohra was one of the expert aviation journalists in the country. Drawing aeroplanes pictures on papers and notepads was his habit.
Although only 28 years old, Bikram Vohra was a seasoned journalist. He had learnt journalism lessons under the tutelage of Khushwant Singh, editor of the most widely circulated English weekly, The Illustrated Weekly Of India. Moreover, he had also appeared as a 'quiz master' on ‘Doordarshan’ television channel even before the small box had reached all households in the country.
I started briefing the editor about the ragging story. A large number of students in her class and also senior students in the dental college were ragging that girl in various ways. The modus operandi of the ragging was, of course, not as severe as reported on college campuses in later years.
Materials like plaster of Paris used for molds made in dentistry at the dental college were being stuffed in her mouth. She was isolated everywhere in class, college campus and no one was allowed to talk to her. While the students travelled from Panjim to Bambolim and back, the girl student was not allowed a seat and she was deliberately pushed when the college bus was moving. There were many complaints of this nature.
I would have typed this news slowly on a typewriter, then the sub-editor or the chief deputy editor would correct the spellings in that news copy. The editor did not have the patience.
He quickly pulled the notepad forward, lifted a pen from the pen stand, tilted his neck, and began to write the story with his left hand. In between, he sought from me some details of the story. He wrote the one-and-half page news in 15 minutes and placed it before me.
I did not find any factual or other error in the copy except for the wrong spelling of 'Parke' instead of 'Parkhe' as my surname in the story byline.
‘Done?’ Vohra asked me and as soon as I said `yes’, he got up from the chair, lit a cigarette and went to the balcony of his cabin.
The Navhind Times and (Marathi Navprabha) offices were then located in a tiny one-storeyed bungalow-type building with a tiled roof. From the balconies, we reporters could see the Mandovi river and the Dayanand Bandodkar road, connecting Miramar and Panjim.
The story handwritten by the editor was typed by his personal assistant and then handed over to the news desk. The news desk did not have to do any work on that story, which appeared as the anchor story on page one the next day. As was his wont with all the stories he cleared, the editor had also given the headline for the story.
The news was carried on Sunday. Despite being the capital of Goa, Panjim is very quiet on Sundays. The editor, chief reporter, and other senior journalists were on weekly off on that day. I stayed at home in Taleigaon on Monday, my weekly off. So I had absolutely no idea what was going on in our newspaper office in my absence that day.
I learnt on Tuesday morning that two buses of the Goa Dental College had arrived at The Navhind Times office on Monday morning. Students wearing white aprons got out of it and stormed into the newspaper office. During those days, there were no security guards at newspapers or any other offices. A delegation of the agitated students met Editor Vohra to express their objections against the ragging case story in the newspaper.
The news of the ragging incident that we had published was not true at all, the students claimed. There was no ragging of that girl or anyone else, the students said, claiming that the news had defamed the Goa Dental College and its students.
I have no idea how Editor Bikram Vohra pacified those angry students. The next day, in Tuesday’s edition, The Navhind Times carried a corrigendum at the bottom of the third page. Quoting the students, it said that no ragging had taken place at the dental college. The editor had also apologised for the agony the news had caused to the students and others.
After seeing this corrigendum in Tuesday's issue and then talking to other colleagues, I realized what had taken place in the office a day earlier in my absence.
Before writing this sensational report of ragging, I and my editor had not followed the basic principle of talking to all involved parties, in this case the Goa Dental College dean as well as the students against whom the ragging charges were levelled.
However, after talking to the students, the newspaper editor had accepted his mistake and immediately followed the other convention in journalism, of issuing a corrigendum. Mind you, issuing a corrigendum is not easy for any editor – it is always issued in the name of the editor, no matter who is responsible for the blunder. Corrigendum reflects and affects the credibility of any newspaper.
Most surprisingly, no one in the newspaper held me responsible for such a major blunder. That was mainly because the editor himself had written the news story on ragging. And those days, fresh from my college days, I was too small in the newspaper hierarchy to be held responsible.
Fortunately the Goa Dental College students were also satisfied with the tendered apology.
Neither the allegedly ragged 'victim' nor her father, a reputed lawyer, contacted me or our newspaper to defend their charges.
The college girl student had obviously levelled baseless ragging allegations for some reasons I never leant. Her lawyer father too had apparently fallen prey to the bogus charges of his lone daughter. I, also a crime and court reporter, had also unwittingly been a victim in this case.
Such unforgivable human mistakes can happen in journalism or any business or field. Often they are not intentional. Therefore, it is wise to accept those mistakes in time, and control the situation by controlling the damage. Editor Bikram Vohra withdrew the issue without making it a matter of prestige and the issue was immediately dropped.
Within a year or two, Bikram Vohra travelled to the Gulf countries for better prospects, where he worked for three decades as an editor for the Gulf News and the Gulf Times. His quirky style articles are occasionally published in The Times of India.
During this period, the office of the newly established Goa University was temporarily opened at Bambolim in a building adjacent to the Dental College. Although the DMC students and I never met face to face in this case, I did not have the courage to go to the Goa University office for news after this controversial news. After that apology, the matter was settled on the same day in the eyes of all those involved.
I have kept hundreds of cuttings with my printed name or byline since 1974. There is of course, no scrap of this controversial news that appeared at the top of page one.
In my long career in English-language journalism, I have had many other instances of misinformation, inadvertently, or careless. However, the news of ragging not happening and the students' march on our daily is a big incident. After a period of three-and-half decades, this unjust and easily avoidable phenomenon in journalism still lingers in my mind.
