Following complaints about students being forced to remove their bras before writing the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET), the Kerala police on Tuesday, July 19, registered a case and have launched an investigation into the matter. A case under sections Sections 354 (Assault or criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty) and 509 (Word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman) of the Indian Penal Code, following a complaint by one of the student’s parents.
On Sunday, July 18, students who had gone to write the NEET exam at the Mar Thoma Institute of Information Technology in Ayur were subject to the invasive practice of being forced to remove their bras. Security at the exam centre claimed that this was done as the bras had metal hooks. In his complaint, the parent Gopakumar Sooranad, said that his daughter was in a distressed state as she and others were forced to write the exam — for which they had been preparing for a long time — without innerwear. If it is the rule, they can check the innerwear during frisking. But why remove them? There are no such rules in the NEET bulletin,” he told TNM. Calling this mental torture, he said he filed a police complaint to avoid more children from having to undergo this ordeal.
Officials of the Mar Thoma Institute of Technology, however, claim that none of their staff were involved in the frisking process, and that it was done by security personnel sent from the National Testing Agency (NTA). “There were two agencies assigned by the NTA for frisking and noting the biometric attendance. We have no clue what the rules on this are. It is the agency’s staff who check all this. In some cases, when the children came crying to us, asking permission to wear a shawl, we intervened and allowed them to do so,” an institute official said. The police have said that those who were involved in the act would be arrested soon.