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Published on September 20, 2007

The foster parents of a teenager who suffered bad burns to his body after rolling over a bonfire in a private vocational college hazing have filed a complaint with police.

Suthin Tosing said her son Niphon, 16, was still in a coma from the weekend incident.

His torso was badly burned and he had suffered a head injury after head-butting the sand beach on the orders of around 40 senior students of the unnamed Bangkok college.

Hazing is a ritualised ceremony, often conducted by college students in North America.

Suthin said the college refused to take responsibility because the senior students organised the hazing on their own, but it gave her all their names. She included them in her complaint filed yesterday with Crime Suppression Division police officers.

The mother filed her complaint with the CSD after Nonthaburi police, whose jurisdiction covers the college, refused to receive it, explaining Thab Sakae police in Prachuap Khiri Khan had primary jurisdiction over the case.

Suthin said she was told about what happened by the owners of a resort in the province where the hazing took place.

She said there were around 70 male students attending the

hazing - not eight or nine as told to her by some seniors who

took Niphon to a local hospital after his condition turned serious.

In the same hazing, two other students suffered severe burns to their bodies and faces after rolling over a bonfire when ordered by their seniors. The two boys said they went to the resort with the group just to have fun and were not prepared to disobey the orders of their seniors. All three students were later transferred to Chol Prathan Hospital in Nonthaburi when the group returned to Bangkok.

The Education Ministry has ordered an investigation.

The Nation