Basement deaths: little faith in police, say UPSC aspirants
Over a week after three Civil Services aspirants drowned in an inundated basement of Rau’s IAS Study Circle in Old Rajinder Nagar, students protesting over the incident said they are still waiting for a fitting response from the authorities over the issues raised by them.
While the protesting students are demanding a total prohibition on the use of basements as libraries or classrooms, they also want a cap on the fee charged by coaching institutes and rent paid by them for paying-guest facilities.
Their other demands include a complete overhaul of the city’s drainage system, impartial probe into the drowning incident, and a fair compensation to the victims’ families.
A 26-year-old Civil Services aspirant from Uttar Pradesh’s Bulandshahr said it is a sheer luck that she wasn’t in the institute’s basement at the time of the incident as she has been going there to prepare for the competitive exam for the past two years.
Her 28-year-old friend, who cleared his preliminary exam this year in his third attempt and is set to take the Mains exam just over a month from now, said students are being charged a hefty amount by coaching institutes while they have been forced to live in crammed rooms even after paying rent anywhere between ₹7,000 and ₹25,000 per month.
“I have a little over a month to prepare for my exam. Despite that, I have been coming to the protest site every day as we no longer want to live in this hell,” he said.
‘Welcome CBI probe’
However, the students said they are partly relieved after the Delhi High Court handed over the probe into the drowning incident to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). “We had very little faith in the Delhi police because they had full knowledge about the functioning of the basement libraries but did nothing to stop the practice,” said a student from Bihar’s Patna.
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