NEET 'innerwear' row: Kerala demands action against test agency

The Kerala government has written to the Centre demanding action against the agency that conducted the NEET medical entrance examination in Kollam district, where the girl students were forced to remove their bras. The news that around hundred girls were asked to remove their innerwear sent shock waves across the state and made people angry and disturbed.

“An agency that has been entrusted with conducting the examination allegedly forced the girl candidates to strip before entering the test centre for reasons known only to them. The shame and shock of this unexpected turn of events affected the morale and composure of the students whose performance in the test was consequently affected,” wrote Dr R Bindu, the minister for higher education in a letter to Dharmendra Pradhan, Union minister for higher education.

The incident that allegedly happened on Sunday (July 17) came to light when a few girls who had sat for the exam and their parents raised the issue with the media. They complained that the girls were so shocked by the turn of events and could not write their exam as well as they had expected.

A girl, who preferred to remain anonymous recounted her trauma to The Federal, “We were sent to a tiny room and asked to strip our clothes and remove our innerwear. There was no facility to keep our inner garments separately and so they were all dumped together on a table. We had to go to the second floor to write the exam after removing the inner garments, and we had to walk past the male volunteers. The boys and girls were sitting together in the exam hall and we felt uncomfortable and exposed. There were girls who were wearing white dresses and I saw them crying.”

Also read: Kerala Police register case against friskers who forced girls to remove undergarments in NEET exam

Furthermore, many girls did not have a metal hook on their bras but they were still asked to remove their inner garment. “Though my innerwear had plastic hooks, they forced me to remove it. My seat was in the front row, I spread my hair over my chest throughout the exam,” said another girl, who attended the NEET entrance examination at Marthoma Institute of Information and Technology at Ayur in Kollam.

On the other hand, the National Testing Agency (NTA) which conducted the NEET examination denied the allegations. The NTA director, Naveen Joshi told the media in Delhi that the preliminary report conducted by them showed there was no truth in the allegations.

He said that the agency which had conducted the examination at Kollam denied that they had asked the girls to remove their inner garments. In fact, the exam centre’s superintendent has told the NTA that the accusation is “fictitious” and police complaint has been made with “wrong intentions”.

Also read: CBI busts NEET racket; 8 persons, including mastermind, arrested

The local police, however, lodged an FIR under sections 354 (assault or criminal force to a woman with intent to outrage her modesty) and 509 (uttering any word or making gestures intended to insult the modesty of a woman) of IPC, after a parent complained to the superintendent of police, Kollam. The FIR has not named any one person as the accused, but the investigation has begun, said the police.

However, NEET exam conducting agencies seem to have violated the self-respect of the students, particularly the girls. In a few centres in Rajasthan and Maharashtra where the NEET exam was also held on July 17, Muslim girls were asked to remove their hijab which  kicked up a storm. More than 18 lakh students appeared for the examination across 3,570 centres in the country.