Jadavpur University student's death: Police arrest former student

The prime accused, Sourav Chowdhury, was taken into police custody in connection with the death of Swarnodip Kundu.

The victim's father has named Chowdhury in the FIR lodged with the JU police station on Thursday.

The accused is a passed-out student of JU in 2022, who lived in the hostel, and is one of the members of the hostel mess committee.

Kundu, a resident of Bogulia in Nadia district, who joined only three days back as a first-year student in the Bengali Honours stream, died after allegedly falling from the second-floor balcony of his hostel.

According to the FIR, the teenager fell off the balcony at around 11:45 PM on Wednesday. He died during treatment on Thursday morning at KPC Medical College.

Kundu’s parents and friends have alleged that he had been a victim of ragging. According to the police, the boy had called his mother at around 9 PM on the day he died and during the conversation expressed fear about “something very scary and take him home immediately”.

His phone was switched off after the conversation. The police are looking at the call records to find out if he talked to anyone else after talking to his mother.

His roommates are being questioned and the police are awaiting the results of his post-mortem.

The university has also constituted a 7-member committee to probe the matter and report within a fortnight.