CALCUTTA, 9 January 2005 — A non-resident Indian MBBS student tried to kill herself yesterday after her expulsion from a medical college in the wake of a capitation fee scandal rocking West Bengal. Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharya expressed shock at the suicide bid even as the administration faces flak for the NRI quota fiasco.
Debjani Mondal, who narrowly escaped death, is one of the 69 NRI MBBS students who were recently evicted from two state-run medical colleges in West Bengal on the orders of the Supreme Court.
The court ordered the expulsion of NRI medical students who had paid one million rupees each as capitation fee to the West Bengal government under the doomed cash-for-medical seats scheme.
Debjani’s parents said she was badly depressed by her expulsion and was undergoing psychiatric treatment at a private nursing home. Within hours of her release from the nursing home, she swallowed an overdose of sleeping pills almost killing herself.
“The West Bengal government will be morally responsible if any of the 69 expelled NRI MBBS students take drastic steps in frustration”, said Debjani’s father.
NRI students thrown out of Calcutta’s S.S.K.M. Medical College and Midnapore Medical College last month are on a relay hunger strike in protest against the Marxist government’s callousness.
They are desperately fighting for justice after the president and the National Human Rights Commission also refused to provide any relief to them. Their contention is that they are being punished for no fault of theirs.
In July 2003, the Left Front government issued a public notification reserving 50 percent of seats in the two medical colleges for NRI students at one million rupees per seat.
Ignoring protests by students who had cleared the tough Joint Entrance Examination, the government admitted 104 NRI students last year. The meritorious students went to the Calcutta High Court which summarily scrapped the NRI quota altogether.
But the state government appealed to the Supreme Court which slashed the NRI quotas from 50 percent to 15 percent last month resulting in mass expulsions.
After expulsions, the vacancies have been filled by students from the merit list of the 2003 Joint Entrance Examination results who went to court against the communist government’s controversial scheme to admit NRI students against cash payments.
