or criminal offence executed by them are liable to be punished and in an instance of violation of such rights committed by university students, they shall be produced before the relevant court and subject to suitable punishment that followed by the trial. After the series of ragging-related incidents happened in 1997, Prohibition of Ragging and Other Forms of Violence in Educational Institutions Act, No. 20 of 1998 was passed in the Sri Lankan parliament. As specified in the detailed note of the Act, it is identified as an Act to eliminate ragging and other forms of violent and cruel inhuman and degrading treatment from educational institutions. The Act specifies the relevant Higher Educational Institutions coming under the Act and that includes all the Higher Educational Institutions established under the Universities Act No. 16 of 1978. Anti-ragging movement Unlike in India, there is no official anti-ragging movement in Sri Lanka. But with the situation of ragging worsening yearly, there is a spontaneously emerging anti-ragging movement in each and every faculty of the universities that ragging exists. In the case of University of Peradeniya, the largest university in Sri Lanka, anti-ragging movement emerged in the year 1996. Prior to that, there was no movement against ragging, but certain individuals managed escape from the ragging. In the meantime, anti-ragging movements started to appear in all other universities. Several faculties in several universities have become rag-free due to these movements, strengthened laws as well as practical difficulties in conducting ragging such as not providing accommodation facilities to the first-year students. Internal clashes have erupted several times due to the friction between ragging and anti-ragging movements, best example being Samantha Vithanage, a third-year management student at the University of Sri Jayewardenepura, who pioneered an anti-ragging campaign that was killed at a meeting while in a discussion about ragging. The higher education minister at the time, S. B. Dissanayake, stressed that firm action will be taken against those who are found guilty of such activities in future and would be expelled from the university. In December 2011, he claimed that the levels of ragging has gone down drastically in the recent times and "only Peradeniya and Ruhuna are still affected by this 'malaise. See also Bullying Hazing Dedovshchina, a Russian practice similar to hazing or ragging Gaslighting List of hazing deaths in the United States References External links Ragging in Bangladesh Ragging in India- Menace Indian