This is the agonising moment young army cadets are thrashed mercilessly by a senior during a brutal beating in a training session.
Secretly recorded footage of an endurance exercise shows the recruits – from India’s National Cadet Corps – undergoing a humiliating spanking with a huge stick.
The corps takes recruits aged 12 to 26 and is considered to be like a junior Sandhurst in India.
But the behind-the-scenes footage shot at the elite Joshi-Bedekar College in Thane, in the Indian state of Maharashtra, shows the grim truth of the regime.
The head of the college later described the instructors as “mentally ill”.
The clip shows a line of about 10 cadets forced to crouch in the rain with their backsides in the air with their foreheads submerged in a muddy puddle.
Then as they struggle to maintain their pose, a senior student spanks them brutally with what appears to be a four-foot-long bamboo pole, known as a lathi.
The slightest error is punished with stroke after stroke of the vicious giant cane.
At one point, one recruit is in so much pain he collapses and begs to be left alone but he is only thrashed even harder on the next exercise.
The beating – so severe it looks like a scene from the film ‘Full Metal Jacket’ – goes on without mercy for nearly three minutes.
It is understood, though, that the vicious assault carried on for around a quarter of an hour.
The woman who filmed the cadets’ agony can be heard saying in English: “This is how you treat…? Who is this guy? Oh God.”
Then she says: “This is literally inhuman, dude. He is doing it purposely.
“Nobody ever send their children in NCC. This is how they behave with them. It’s raining and this thing is going since 15 minutes.
“And this is how he is treating their juniors. This is how you increase the stamina? By beating them? Mercilessly?
“And there are three more seniors. See the amount of force he is applying.”
Politicians from India’s opposition party raised the outrage in the Maharashtra Assembly after the video surfaced online.
The newly elected Leader Of the Opposition, Vijay Wadettiwar, raised the issue on 28th July.
Speaker Rahul Narvekar then directed the government to take action.
Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar has assured the house that strict action will be taken against the culprits, according to local media.
The Principal of Joshi-Bedekar College, Suchitra Naik, reportedly called the incident “shocking” and “shameful”.
She said: “I would say that the senior students who have been involved in the brutal beating of the juniors are mentally ill.
“They are not human. Apparently apprehensive of their academic careers, most of the students and their parents are preferring to keep quiet.
“We have appealed to the affected students to come forward and identify the seniors and lodge complaints against them. In the past, the NCC has done a very good and commendable job in the college but this incident is really shameful.”
The investigation is ongoing.
