Bhubaneswar: Five students of a government engineering college in Odisha’s Keonjhar district were arrested on charges of meting out ragging to one of their juniors last night.

The arrested students have been identified as Mohit Patra, Chittaranjan Kusum, Sekhar Kumar Makar, Rabinarayan Das and Samarjit Mallick.

All the accused are the third-year students of Government College of Engineering (GCE), Keonjhar.

The accused students allegedly barged into the hostel room of Biswajit Behera, a second-year student of the institute, last night.

They allegedly attacked Behera and vandalised his belongings without any provocation. Behera sustained injuries in the attack and was rushed to the Keonjhar District Headquarters Hospital (DHH) by his family today morning.

His family also lodged a complaint in this regard with Keonjhar Town police. On the basis of the complaint, the cops registered a case and detained the accused students for questioning.

The five accused students were later arrested, said Keonjhar Town police IIC Srikant Patra.

Taking the incident seriously, the college authorities convened a meeting of the disciplinary committee.

As per the decision of the disciplinary committee, the accused students have been rusticated from the college for a year.

They have also been expelled from the hostel and barred from participating any event in the institute for a year.