#JNU violence: Four months on

[iiankitsingh]

JNU violence: Four months on, police yet to take action, students still fearful and Right, Left continue blame game

JNU violence: Four months on, police yet to take action, students still fearful and Right, Left continue blame game

“I left the JNU campus a month after the violence… out of fear,” says Surya Prakash, a visually-challenged student of Jawaharlal Nehru University enrolled in a PhD course. The reason? “Some people had entered my room and brutally beaten me up with iron rods.” He refers to the violence that took place inside JNU campus on 5 January. Even though it has been over four months since the incident took…

[anastkantdhangar]

Why India’s Social Milieu Needs An Urgent Contemplation

India, traditionally, has been offering astounding variety in virtually every aspect of social life - diversities of ethnic, linguistic, regional, economic, religious, class, and caste groups crosscut Indian society, which gives light to its very inclusive, secular and democratic character. But why there has been a social unrest lately?

India ranks 144th on the World Happiness Index out of a total 156 countries on the list, even behind the likes of Pakistan, ranked 66th, and Bangladesh, ranked 107th.

17th June, 2019, a 24-year old man called Tabrez Ansari was mob-lynched in Jharkhand. He was tied to a pole sometime around midnight, and was beaten brutally till 6 in the morning, and was also forced to chant Hindu sayings. As usual, police arrived late, Tabrez was taken to the hospital, where even his blood pressure was not recorded. He died four days later.

Kashmiri Pandits were victims to a similar unfortunate happening. They were forced to exodus from their own home, and ever since, Kashmir has been even more of a hot topic.

It was a similar mob which chased and killed Inspector Subodh Kumar Singh in December, 2018 in Bulandshahr. He was trying to control a mob that had gone on the rampage after cow carcasses were discovered nearby the locality. The same mob also raised slogans against the police during the unfortunate happening.

Back then, between 2015-2018 specifically, such things were done in the name of cows, an animal which holds a religious significance in Hindu mythology. Considerable amount of such happenings on the name of cow slaughtering frequently grabbed news headlines back then, and as a consequence, consumption of beef in India saw some low. When reports of cow being starved to death in official government shelters started coming in, and also about that stray cattle were destroying crops and farmers were not very pleased with it, politics abandoned cows. It is obvious that cows, along with other animals, need to be protected, also given the fact that dairy products are a must, there needs more to be done to protect and nurse them. But the project of fear and violence that had been started, still continues in various forms.

But, unfortunately, cases of mob-lynchings still take place in our beloved India. The very recent case of Palghar district in Maharashtra, where two Hindu saints, while being in police custody and being taken to Gujarat, were attacked by locals. Reports suggest that the rumors were spread in the area about a gang which abducts children, and on the suspicion of the same, the saints were beaten to death, while the act of police standing quietly beside raised many questions.

A particular section of society, including sections of media, left no stone unturned to give it a communal angle. And there is no denying that there are communal and casteist angles to most of such cases, but there is a larger angle to it. The fact that somehow normal and a routine act it has become to lynch anyone you disagree with, who is outnumbered, is a thing which we need to question. What message are we passing on to the youth? Aspiring to be a global superpower, what are we projecting ourselves as?

The Larger Picture

Democracy has space for various views, expressing dissent in a dignified manner, solving issues, but no democracy can justify use of violence or any arbitrary means to deal with dissent. The very feeling of people that they too are ours should not be compromised at any cost.

The fact that the frequency of such acts has increased in last few years outlines that a message has been passed on to the society, especially the youth, that to beat up someone who does not agree with you, or who expresses any or some form of dissent is a normal practice. Of course, there also has to be some manner and dignity in which dissent should be expressed in a democratic society. But to suppress dissent brutally should not be a solution in a civil society.

This the reason why a new debate had acquired the headlines for some time about whether and how India has been growing intolerant rapidly, but the media and the viewers, the public, a large part of it, did not pay much attention to it. This was and is, what I believe, still a relevant question to ask and explore.

A considerable section of the youth has grasped that dissent or disagreement can be or has to be suppressed, even if it needs violence, which is more than worrisome. This is very much evident owing to recent JNU Campus Violence amongst students back in winter during anti-CAA protests. And the youth today, is the future tomorrow, which is why this makes it even more worrisome.

This even stops many from expressing their views, fearing that might get beaten up by the people having other views, and by not letting other ideas to be out there in the society, the prevailing ideas of the authorities are being hailed as champions. This is where we are failing as a democratic society. We have stopped or started to prevent asking questions.

A democratic society is always full of different ideas, views and perspectives, that is the beauty of democracy. A democratic society always cleaves up, if a one and only idea prevails in the society, there has to be something wrong, we are never going to realize what's wrong in such a scenario, and we have contemporary examples of such autocracies. And there were reasons why human, with time, switched from monarchy to democracy, he liked the idea of discussing various angles and coming up with one which could be best, as it will cover as many as loopholes, angles and point of views as possible, for the best of interests for every section of the society.

The Core Youth Issue

India’s 65% population comprises of people aged 35 or below, making it potentially one of the youngest country in the world, but what’s fresh in them? 

A child learns most of the civil and moral values at home, he learns what he sees, and tends to practice the same, this is the normal scenario. What he learns through the education system, along with his moral values, is somewhat an outline of what kind of a person one is, how one’s attitude is. And India’s education system has been questioned ever since.

The Indian government’s very own draft education policy tells us that National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) rates 68% of our Universities average or below average, and 91% of our colleges are rated average or below average. These second-and third-grade colleges would have produced generations of average or below average students and scholars.

Today’s youth of India has been in the making for decades. A great deal of efforts must have been put in to finish off all the curiosity and hunger for knowledge and information. The youth no longer wants to understand why a system made them spend lakhs of rupees studying, when at the end most of them could not find jobs which could even earn them Rs.20,000 per month, but still are repaying their education loans. It is the official data released back in 2018 that around 67% families in India survive with a monthly family income of Rs. 10,000 or below.

Those who demand information, who understand their world, those who question the status quo, are the ones who sustain democracies. Can we expect such democratic ideals from the youth of a country where 91% colleges and 68% Universities are average or below average? 65% of Indians might be under the age of 35, but there’s little sign of anything fresh in their thinking. Their minds are not young. They were first burdened with great ignorance, and now they’ve been blinded by communalism.

With 91% colleges being second and third rate, it was inevitable that the youth is kept away from the realm of knowledge. This must have had a large say on why WhatsApp University became so popular, the very messages people received on their private chats must have felt to them that they now had an access to knowledge, the very fact that it was so easily accessible, made it very impactful. Lies and misleading information designed to prejudice them and incite them to violence now began to reach their smartphones as personal texts. 

Fear Of Speaking Out (FOMO FOSO)

Our Lok Sabha has passed amendments to Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act last year, that gives authorities the power to declare any individual a ‘terrorist’. After it was amended, many social workers who have worked for the under-privileged for years, and raised important issues which was not in the best of interests for the authorities, have been imprisoned under UAPA.

As an obvious consequence, many have held themselves back to not speak out on issues they would have spoken on otherwise, the fear of intolerance of some sections of the society which may turn ugly and the fear of trolls of social media of the great IT Cell may also have been the reasons for the same.

There was a very popular dissent outrage in the form of protests in the form of anti-CAA-NRC protests. Protests in cities and college campuses took place across the nation, some also turned ugly as violence broke out in certain protests. To counter anti-CAA-NRC protests, pro-CAA-NRC protests were also being held in various parts of the country, which was first of its kind. The national lockdown owing to the coronavirus pandemic has brought the topic to a stop, but during this lockdown, various student leaders of anti-CAA-NRC have been charged under UAPA.

JP Narayan addressing a rally during JP movement in 1974. Many scholars speculate that the real Emergency started not in 1975, but in 1974.

In the history of independent India, its hard to remember any other popular mass protest where people across the nation came to roads to express dissent to the authorities, only one such example crosses our minds - the JP Narayan movement in 1974, during the time when Indira Gandhi used to be the PM of India, which mostly included students, and was ultimately suppressed after imposition of Emergency in 1975. But owing to a new practice we have accepted of labeling every sound that questions the authorities as anti-nationals or leftists.

India has had a history of patriarchy, which still prevails in many forms. Women in India, historically, have not been provided equal rights and recognition as men do. In such a nation, be it in the name of anti-CAA-NRC, such a large all-women protest of a scale as big as Shaheen Bagh is a very, very rare thing. Irrespective of our political affiances and interests, the fact that historically deprived women actually came out and led a mass protest on their own, which lasted for more than 3 months and has come to a haul owing to the pandemic, this certainly deserved some thoughts.

Motive of the protest, political interests and such stuffs can be and should be questioned, but in the process we should also give some recognition to things which are rare and important.

We all may share different political thoughts, different political affiliations, but at the end of the day, we all belong to one nation, and our ideas should be for the best of interests for our nation and its people as a whole.

[bigyack-com]

One month on, no arrests in JNU violence, probe panel yet to question victims - delhi news

A month after an armed mob attacked students and teachers on JNU campus, a special police investigation team and a panel set up by the university have unearthed little about the violence that sparked an outrage and raised questions about inability of the police to control it. HT has learnt that while police are yet to make any arrests, the JNU probe committee has not even approached the victims or eyewitnesses in the last four weeks.On January 5, a mob of masked men and women, carrying iron rods, sticks and a sledgehammer had assaulted students and teachers on JNU campus, injuring at least 30, while a police contingent waited outside the university gate for a formal permission by the administration to enter the campus. The SIT set up by the Delhi police has questioned some students, including JNU students union president Aishe Ghosh, one of those injured, but one alleged suspect, identified as a student of Delhi university and a member of the ABVP, is yet to join investigation. Her questioning is important because her involvement, if confirmed, establishes the role of outsiders. In the videos circulated on social media, she is seen carrying a stick and leading a mob on the campus.JNUSU members, who are from the Left parties, said though they have been questioned many times, police are yet to arrest anyone. JNU Students’ Union (JNUSU) general secretary Satish Yadav said it is astonishing that Delhi police visited so many states and arrested Sharjeel Imam under the colonial law of sedition but they have not been able to arrest anyone in connection with the JNU mob attack case.“The police should show the same enthusiasm and arrest the masked goons. We even helped them identify the students caught on tape, yet there is little that the police have done. Students helped them identify the female DU student, who was the most aggressive. Students had also identified her but despite that police have not questioned her. She is a member of the ABVP. This raises suspicion that police are silently supporting the attackers,” Yadav said. A police officer, who did not wish to be named, confirmed that the suspect DU student is yet to join probe. “The SIT has questioned leaders from both sides. She will join probe. Initially there was a problem because her phone was switched off. Instead of calling female students to the station, our women officers are going to the place where the female students call us. This is a detailed investigation and is ongoing.”The officials of the SIT said over the last one month, they have collected evidence in the form of cell phone videos and eyewitness statement. The videos have also been sent to the Central Forensic Science Laboratory.Similarly, the internal probe by the varsity too has made little progress since the day vice-chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar constituted the committee. The committee was formed to probe the violence inside the campus. HT spoke to many students from the Left and the right leaning groups who said they were yet to be contacted by the committee to record their statement.Monika Bishnoi, president of Sabarmati hostel at JNU, which had witnessed maximum vandalism, said no one contacted her or any other eye witness of the incident in the hostel for questioning. “Our hostel residents should technically be the first one to reach out to know about the violence. We are not being contacted by any of the committee member yet,” she said.On January 10, five days after the violence, Mazhar Asif, chairperson of the Centre of Persian and Central Asian Studies and a committee member, had said, “We will approach students and teachers to record their accounts.”Velentina Brahma, one of the ABVP members who received injuries in the violence, said, “I’ve no clue about the committee. I’ve not been approached by anyone to record my account.” Another ABVP member in JNU Manish Jangid said that they are in contact with the Delhi Police’s crime branch but unaware of internal committee. The president of the Jawaharlal Nehru Teachers Association too confirmed that the injured teachers were yet to be contacted by the committee.Apart from Asif, the other four members of the committee are Sushant Mishra, chairperson of the Centre for French and Francophone Studies; Sudhir Pratap Singh, professor at the School of Languages; Santosh Shukla, professor at the School of Sanskrit and Indic Studies, and Bhaswati Das, professor at the Centre for Studies in Regional Development. While the other four committee members did not respond to calls and text messages, Das said she was not authorised to speak. JNU V-C Jagadesh Kumar and registrar Pramod Kumar also did reply to calls and texts made to seek a comment. Read the full article

[brajeshupadhyay]

JNU violence: Four months on, police yet to take action, students still fearful and Right, Left continue blame game

"I left the JNU campus a month after the violence… out of fear," says Surya Prakash, a visually-challenged student of Jawaharlal Nehru University enrolled in a PhD course. The reason? "Some people had entered my room and brutally beaten me up with iron rods." He refers to the violence that took place inside JNU campus on 5 January. Even though it has been over four months since the incident took place, it is still crystal clear in his memory.

"I was sitting inside my room in the Sabarmati Hostel, studying, when I heard loud noises coming from the outside. I didn't know who those people were, but they broke open the door of my room and entered. They beat me ruthlessly, and for no reason. I am a neutral, common student who has no links with any political parties on the campus," he recalls, "After I told them that I was blind, one girl among them said, 'Andha hai toh kya hua? Maaro saale ko (So what if he is blind? Beat him up)!'."

He is now in Uttar Pradesh's Deoria, his hometown. "Soon after the incident, I packed my bags and came home out of fear. After the incident, nobody slept alone in my hostel. Nobody went to the washroom alone. They would relieve themselves in buckets in their rooms instead of venturing out."

But it's not just the incident that's on his mind these days. It's also the "inaction" of the police. "I complained about the incident, the police came to my room, the crime branch came, the media came — all of them said I would get justice. But to date, nothing has been done. My offenders have gone unpunished," he laments.

Surya believes that the police was involved in the violence that evening. "Unidentified people entered the campus in hundreds that day, with lathis, iron rods and hammers. How did they manage to do that when the police were present on campus? They themselves were involved in the violence by giving those people a freehand."

Around 30 people, including teachers and students, were injured in the violence unleashed on them by "masked men and women" with lathis and iron rods. The violent episode lasted for nearly two hours, during which university property was also damaged.

What happened on 5 January?

Sucheta Talukdar, counsellor at the School of Social Sciences recalls, "As soon as we learned that some goons had entered the campus, all the campus lights went out. A mob of more than 50 people came and started hurling stones at us. There was chaos." According to her, she could recognise some of the members of the mob as JNU students who are part of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidhyarthi Parishad (ABVP).

"We got really scared because we had never witnessed such a thing on campus before. One student held my hand and said, 'Sucheta bhaag, ye log maar daalenge tujhe (Sucheta run! Otherwise these people will kill you)'. And looking at the lathis and rods in their hands, I got scared and hid at a dhaba. I narrowly escaped getting hurt, but many others actually were badly injured," she says.

At the time of the attack, Talukdar was at Sabarmati Tea Point, responding to a Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers' Association (JNUTA) call for a peace march held in response to the violence that took place the previous day.

The day before the violence

Apeksha Priyadarshi, a PhD student at the School and Arts and Aesthetics Department in JNU, recalls the day before the major violence took place, "We had been striking on campus for months due to the fee hike. On 1 January, the administration opened up registration without resolving the main issue of the fee hike — a roughly 900 percent increase."

After registration began, the Jawaharlal Nehru University Student Union (JNUSU) called for non-compliance with the registration process, demanding that the new hostel manual be rolled back. "There was a group of almost 15 people moving around the campus, beating people. They attacked the areas surrounding the School of Languages, School of International Studies and the School of Biotechnology," she says.

According to her, in an attempt to stop the attackers from beating up her friend, she was attacked. "They started beating me with their bare hands. On that day, most of the violence was with bare hands and not with objects such as lathis and rods as we saw the next day — that day, they were all prepared."

She says that the reason for the violence on 5 January was what happened a day earlier. "The student body had refused to give in to the administration's demands and register for the examinations. The group that beat up students was acting at the behest of the administration. That's why it stepped in to stop us from resisting the administration's move to increase the fee," she claims.

"The collusion between the security personnel, the administration and the [group allegedly comprising] ABVP members was very clear that day. Even the police never converted our complaints into FIRs, because it knew that it would have to take action on an FIR," she adds.

What led to the violence?

Before the major violence took place, JNU had been the site for an anti-fee hike protest for around three months. Students were protesting what the JNUSU dubbed the "privatisation" and "commodification" of education. The protests involved multiple negotiations with the Ministry of Human Resource Development focussed on reducing fees. On 1 January, registration for the new semester had already begun, which led to the JNUSU calling for a boycott of the registration process — with which many students complied.

"If places like JNU don't raise their voice against the increase of fees in central universities, the impact will fall on thousands of other universities and poor students. At JNU, we have the privilege of being heard, so we made sure to protest the privatisation of education. Initially, they wanted to increase the fees by 900 percent, then it was reduced after negotiation. If the students are unable to pay the fees, what's the point in filling registration forms?" asks Aishe Ghosh, JNUSU president.

However, Ritwik Raj, a member of ABVP and counsellor at the School of International Studies at JNU, believes that this was a wrong step. Raj claims that the Left is trying to defame the ABVP by creating propaganda against the RSS-affiliate. "People who have indulged in violence have done so over their own disagreements. Some have beaten up students who had demanded Kashmir's aazadi [freedom] a day earlier. But ABVP had nothing to do with it. We do not support violence, and there was nobody from ABVP involved in this," he says. According to him, the ABVP was attacked by the Left and that the former didn't resort to any violence.

He explains, "We had a rational approach towards the protests. We supported the fight against the fee hike, but the students who didn't want to be part of the protest and wanted to study instead should not have been expected to do join in. They should have been allowed to sit in the library and fill the registration forms. Over 150 people in my department alone filled registration forms within a day. The Left felt threatened."

In response, Ghosh says, "We didn't force students to boycott the registration process, we convinced them."

In a reply to an RTI filed by Saurav Das, a member of the National Campaign for People's Right to Information (NCPRI), under the 'life and liberty' clause, the university said that the main server of JNU at the Centre for Information System (CIS) was shut down on 3 January and was down the next day 'due to power supply disruption'.

Ghosh was also among those who were severely hurt during the violence on campus. "As a student representative, I chose to be at the forefront. I saw teachers and other students getting hurt as stones were hurled at us. Around 15 to 20 men gheraoed me and started beating me up. I tried to ask them what they wanted, but by then I was already bleeding. They had sledgehammers, lathis and rods," says Ghosh, who sustained injuries to her head and arms. "It was like they had a grudge against me and wanted to finish me off," she continues, adding, "I used to get rape and death threats for standing up to the administration."

Police 'inaction'

"The fact that no action has been taken against the perpetrators of the violence on campus proves that we aren't safe anymore and anybody can indulge in violence and get away with it," says Ghosh, opining, "Obviously, the police is very biased. Its press conference clearly shows that." A special investigation team headed by Joy Tirkey, DCP Crime was formed to investigate the violence.

Five days after the incident, the Delhi Police's Crime Branch held a press conference saying that "nine suspects" had been identified. The police, accused of inaction when the masked mob managed to escape unhurt from the campus on the night of the violence after the attack, had not made a single arrest till then.

In the press conference, the police had held responsible four Left organisations for the violence — the Students' Federation of India (SFI), the All India Students' Association (AISA), All India Students' Federation (AISF) and Democratic Students' Federation (DSF), but the ABVP was not named, even though many students claimed to have video evidence against ABVP members indulging in violence. No mention of outsiders having entered the campus was made.

Ghosh, however, calls the list of suspects "unsubstantiated", saying, "The police commissioner came up with my name as a suspect in the press conference held in January. But to date, why haven't charges been filed against me? It is because they don't have evidence."

An NDTV investigation on the matter a day later hinted at the role of ABVP members in the violence, but no action has yet been taken against any members of the ABVP. Among the FIRs filed against students by the administration, no member of the ABVP has been named.

Sucharita Sen, a JNU professor who suffered a severe head injury during the violence recently filed a plea seeking the filing of an FIR against the 'wanton acts of violence' she suffered. In her case, as in many others, no FIR has been filed.

She recalls, "I was among the first people to get hurt. When this mob entered the Sabarmati Tea Point, the JNUTA holding a peace march. I came forward because I felt they would not hurt women professors, and we also didn't want the students to come forward. But we were wrong, they started pelting stones at us, and some of those hit me in the head. I started bleeding profusely." Seeking an early hearing on the matter, considering that the case had been dormant for over four months, Sen had had moved an early hearing application before the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate, Patiala House Court.

In response to Sen's plea, the Delhi court on Tuesday directed the Delhi Police's Crime Branch to file a status report in the JNU violence case. "Let a status report be called from the Crime Branch, New Delhi within seven days from today mentioning the details of the FIR and the action taken pursuant to it," the two-page order said, posting the matter for 18 May. The status report on the matter has already been postponed twice, once listing the matter for hearing on 25 April, and then to 18 June on the account of extension of the lockdown.

Delhi Police PRO, MS Randhawa said, "The investigation is ongoing. We are hoping to haven a breakthrough soon."

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[iiankitsingh]

"I left the JNU campus a month after the violence… out of fear," says Surya Prakash, a visually-challenged student of Jawaharlal Nehru University enrolled in a PhD course. The reason? "Some people had entered my room and brutally beaten me up with iron rods." He refers to the violence that took place inside JNU campus on 5 January. Even though it has been over four months since the incident took place, it is still crystal clear in his memory.

"I was sitting inside my room in the Sabarmati Hostel, studying, when I heard loud noises coming from the outside. I didn't know who those people were, but they broke open the door of my room and entered. They beat me ruthlessly, and for no reason. I am a neutral, common student who has no links with any political parties on the campus," he recalls, "After I told them that I was blind, one girl among them said, 'Andha hai toh kya hua? Maaro saale ko (So what if he is blind? Beat him up)!'."

He is now in Uttar Pradesh's Deoria, his hometown. "Soon after the incident, I packed my bags and came home out of fear. After the incident, nobody slept alone in my hostel. Nobody went to the washroom alone. They would relieve themselves in buckets in their rooms instead of venturing out."

But it's not just the incident that's on his mind these days. It's also the "inaction" of the police. "I complained about the incident, the police came to my room, the crime branch came, the media came — all of them said I would get justice. But to date, nothing has been done. My offenders have gone unpunished," he laments.

Surya believes that the police was involved in the violence that evening. "Unidentified people entered the campus in hundreds that day, with lathis, iron rods and hammers. How did they manage to do that when the police were present on campus? They themselves were involved in the violence by giving those people a freehand."

Around 30 people, including teachers and students, were injured in the violence unleashed on them by "masked men and women" with lathis and iron rods. The violent episode lasted for nearly two hours, during which university property was also damaged.

What happened on 5 January?

Sucheta Talukdar, counsellor at the School of Social Sciences recalls, "As soon as we learned that some goons had entered the campus, all the campus lights went out. A mob of more than 50 people came and started hurling stones at us. There was chaos." According to her, she could recognise some of the members of the mob as JNU students who are part of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidhyarthi Parishad (ABVP).

"We got really scared because we had never witnessed such a thing on campus before. One student held my hand and said, 'Sucheta bhaag, ye log maar daalenge tujhe (Sucheta run! Otherwise these people will kill you)'. And looking at the lathis and rods in their hands, I got scared and hid at a dhaba. I narrowly escaped getting hurt, but many others actually were badly injured," she says.

At the time of the attack, Talukdar was at Sabarmati Tea Point, responding to a Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers' Association (JNUTA) call for a peace march held in response to the violence that took place the previous day.

The day before the violence

Apeksha Priyadarshi, a PhD student at the School and Arts and Aesthetics Department in JNU, recalls the day before the major violence took place, "We had been striking on campus for months due to the fee hike. On 1 January, the administration opened up registration without resolving the main issue of the fee hike — a roughly 900 percent increase."

After registration began, the Jawaharlal Nehru University Student Union (JNUSU) called for non-compliance with the registration process, demanding that the new hostel manual be rolled back. "There was a group of almost 15 people moving around the campus, beating people. They attacked the areas surrounding the School of Languages, School of International Studies and the School of Biotechnology," she says.

According to her, in an attempt to stop the attackers from beating up her friend, she was attacked. "They started beating me with their bare hands. On that day, most of the violence was with bare hands and not with objects such as lathis and rods as we saw the next day — that day, they were all prepared."

She says that the reason for the violence on 5 January was what happened a day earlier. "The student body had refused to give in to the administration's demands and register for the examinations. The group that beat up students was acting at the behest of the administration. That's why it stepped in to stop us from resisting the administration's move to increase the fee," she claims.

"The collusion between the security personnel, the administration and the [group allegedly comprising] ABVP members was very clear that day. Even the police never converted our complaints into FIRs, because it knew that it would have to take action on an FIR," she adds.

What led to the violence?

Before the major violence took place, JNU had been the site for an anti-fee hike protest for around three months. Students were protesting what the JNUSU dubbed the "privatisation" and "commodification" of education. The protests involved multiple negotiations with the Ministry of Human Resource Development focussed on reducing fees. On 1 January, registration for the new semester had already begun, which led to the JNUSU calling for a boycott of the registration process — with which many students complied.

"If places like JNU don't raise their voice against the increase of fees in central universities, the impact will fall on thousands of other universities and poor students. At JNU, we have the privilege of being heard, so we made sure to protest the privatisation of education. Initially, they wanted to increase the fees by 900 percent, then it was reduced after negotiation. If the students are unable to pay the fees, what's the point in filling registration forms?" asks Aishe Ghosh, JNUSU president.

However, Ritwik Raj, a member of ABVP and counsellor at the School of International Studies at JNU, believes that this was a wrong step. Raj claims that the Left is trying to defame the ABVP by creating propaganda against the RSS-affiliate. "People who have indulged in violence have done so over their own disagreements. Some have beaten up students who had demanded Kashmir's aazadi [freedom] a day earlier. But ABVP had nothing to do with it. We do not support violence, and there was nobody from ABVP involved in this," he says. According to him, the ABVP was attacked by the Left and that the former didn't resort to any violence.

He explains, "We had a rational approach towards the protests. We supported the fight against the fee hike, but the students who didn't want to be part of the protest and wanted to study instead should not have been expected to do join in. They should have been allowed to sit in the library and fill the registration forms. Over 150 people in my department alone filled registration forms within a day. The Left felt threatened."

In response, Ghosh says, "We didn't force students to boycott the registration process, we convinced them."

In a reply to an RTI filed by Saurav Das, a member of the National Campaign for People's Right to Information (NCPRI), under the 'life and liberty' clause, the university said that the main server of JNU at the Centre for Information System (CIS) was shut down on 3 January and was down the next day 'due to power supply disruption'.

Ghosh was also among those who were severely hurt during the violence on campus. "As a student representative, I chose to be at the forefront. I saw teachers and other students getting hurt as stones were hurled at us. Around 15 to 20 men gheraoed me and started beating me up. I tried to ask them what they wanted, but by then I was already bleeding. They had sledgehammers, lathis and rods," says Ghosh, who sustained injuries to her head and arms. "It was like they had a grudge against me and wanted to finish me off," she continues, adding, "I used to get rape and death threats for standing up to the administration."

Police 'inaction'

"The fact that no action has been taken against the perpetrators of the violence on campus proves that we aren't safe anymore and anybody can indulge in violence and get away with it," says Ghosh, opining, "Obviously, the police is very biased. Its press conference clearly shows that." A special investigation team headed by Joy Tirkey, DCP Crime was formed to investigate the violence.

Five days after the incident, the Delhi Police's Crime Branch held a press conference saying that "nine suspects" had been identified. The police, accused of inaction when the masked mob managed to escape unhurt from the campus on the night of the violence after the attack, had not made a single arrest till then.

In the press conference, the police had held responsible four Left organisations for the violence — the Students' Federation of India (SFI), the All India Students' Association (AISA), All India Students' Federation (AISF) and Democratic Students' Federation (DSF), but the ABVP was not named, even though many students claimed to have video evidence against ABVP members indulging in violence. No mention of outsiders having entered the campus was made.

Ghosh, however, calls the list of suspects "unsubstantiated", saying, "The police commissioner came up with my name as a suspect in the press conference held in January. But to date, why haven't charges been filed against me? It is because they don't have evidence."

An NDTV investigation on the matter a day later hinted at the role of ABVP members in the violence, but no action has yet been taken against any members of the ABVP. Among the FIRs filed against students by the administration, no member of the ABVP has been named.

Sucharita Sen, a JNU professor who suffered a severe head injury during the violence recently filed a plea seeking the filing of an FIR against the 'wanton acts of violence' she suffered. In her case, as in many others, no FIR has been filed.

She recalls, "I was among the first people to get hurt. When this mob entered the Sabarmati Tea Point, the JNUTA holding a peace march. I came forward because I felt they would not hurt women professors, and we also didn't want the students to come forward. But we were wrong, they started pelting stones at us, and some of those hit me in the head. I started bleeding profusely." Seeking an early hearing on the matter, considering that the case had been dormant for over four months, Sen had had moved an early hearing application before the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate, Patiala House Court.

In response to Sen's plea, the Delhi court on Tuesday directed the Delhi Police's Crime Branch to file a status report in the JNU violence case. "Let a status report be called from the Crime Branch, New Delhi within seven days from today mentioning the details of the FIR and the action taken pursuant to it," the two-page order said, posting the matter for 18 May. The status report on the matter has already been postponed twice, once listing the matter for hearing on 25 April, and then to 18 June on the account of extension of the lockdown.

Delhi Police PRO, MS Randhawa said, "The investigation is ongoing. We are hoping to haven a breakthrough soon."

from Firstpost India Latest News https://bit.ly/2L6s4jd via IFTTT

[bigyack-com]

CAA protest peaceful, 350 detained in Delhi - india news

Over 350 people were detained in Delhi on Friday for trying to stage a demonstration outside the Uttar Pradesh Bhavan against alleged police excesses in the state during the turmoil over the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, or CAA, even as protests outside Jama Masjid after weekly prayers passed without any untoward incident amid a heavy deployment of security personnel.The day also saw demonstrations against the controversial legislation and the proposed National Register of Citizens (NRC) exercise at south Delhi’s Jor Bagh, Jamia Millia Islamia university and Kalindi Kunj in southeast Delhi and in northeast Delhi’s Seelampur. No detentions or clashes were reported at these protests, the police said.Keeping in mind the clashes that erupted in Delhi and in Uttar Pradesh after prayers last Friday, December 20, a dense security cover was clamped on sensitive areas to deter potential troublemakers. A large number of people took part in separate demonstrations against and in favour of CAA in Mumbai as well.The CAA has triggered a nationwide debate on whether the law violates the country’s secular nature by excluding a particular religious group from its ambit, as has the iron-fisted approach adopted by police in some areas, including Delhi, to quell protests. The law favours non-Muslim refugees from the Muslim-majority countries of Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan.At south Delhi’s Chanakyapuri, police on Friday foiled attempts by Jamia students to “gherao” UP Bhavan by detaining 357 protesters. The demonstrators were not able to assemble at the spot after they were detained from areas around Chanakyapuri and the varsity.The police had imposed prohibitory orders under Section 144 around UP Bhavan, where protests were also carried out on Thursday. Section 144 bars public assemblies of four or more people.Additional deputy commissioner of police (New Delhi) Deepak Yadav said, “The protest was being carried out in violation of Section 144, which was imposed in the area, and without prior permission by the police. The demonstrators were asked not to protest. However, when the protesters didn’t follow police directions, 357 protesters —282 male and 75 female — were detained.” Many among the detainees were students from Jamia, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), and Delhi University (DU) along with activists and residents. All detained protesters were released by evening.“Almost all the buses which left from Jamia Nagar were detained by the police. Individual protesters who came through other means of transport were also detained separately,” the Jamia Coordination Committee (JCC) said in a statement.At the iconic Jama Masjid, unlike last week, fewer people gathered after Friday prayers after a protest call was issued by former member of the Delhi Legislative Assembly and Congress leader Shoaib Iqbal. He was joined by Congress member Alka Lamba. The protesters dispersed from Jama Masjid around 2.45 pm.Heavy security was deployed around the mosque, particularly in light of the violence that took place in nearby Daryaganj after a similar protest turned violent last Friday.On December 20, a peaceful protest was held after noon prayers at Jama Masjid. Towards the evening, violence broke out at nearby Delhi Gate that left 46 injured. Bhim Army chief Chandra Shekhar Azad, who was present at the Jama Masjid protest, was later arrested after the police registered a case of rioting against him.Amid the heavy security arrangement and drone surveillance, 100 protesters, including Bhim Army members, started from Dargah Shah-e-Mardan in Jor Bagh and were stopped by police at a barricade en route to the PM’s residence on Lok Kalyan Marg. They were demanding the release of the Bhim Army chief and those arrested in Uttar Pradesh. Drones kept hovering over the protesters as they kept pleading with the police to allow them to march ahead. Entry and exit gates at Lok Kalyan Marg Metro station were closed for an hour in view of the protest.No untoward incident was reported at the march, police said.Rapid Action Force (RAF) personnel in Seelampur were seen with electric shock shields, a hi-tech anti-riot gear. The shield generates a 12-volt electric current and is used to temporarily immobilise violent protesters. Joint commissioner of police (eastern range) Alok Kumar said the new shields were not used against any protestors on Friday since no violence was reported.In Uttar Pradesh, where at least 21 people died during violent protests on December 20 and in the following days, a dense security cover was clamped on sensitive areas to deter potential troublemakers. “Entire UP was peaceful. There is no report of any untoward incident from anywhere in the state,” UP director general of police (DGP) OP Singh said.In Mumbai, students and social activists held a protest against the CAA and the NRC at the Azad Maidan, while a large number of people gathered for a pro-CAA rally at the historic August Kranti Maidan, where a massive anti-CAA demonstration was held last week. At Azad Maidan, protesters shouted slogans against the government with one of the protesters alleging that the act was aimed “not against just one community but against the whole country.” At the August Kranti Maidan rally, organised by the BJP’s Sanvidan Sanman Manch, supporters of CAA were seen carrying national flags along with placards with pro-CAA and NRC messages.More than two dozen people have died across the country, most in Uttar Pradesh, over the past two weeks in protests against the controversial law, which was passed by Parliament on December 11. The agitation against the law picked up pace after clashes broke out at a protest at Jamia earlier this month. The new law paves the path to naturalisation for “persecuted minorities” from the three Muslim-majority neighbouring countries who came to India before December 31, 2014.People in different parts of India are roiled over this law because it links citizenship with religion, which they argue is against the secular nature of the Indian Constitution; and because when connected with a proposed nationwide NRC, it paves the way for Hindus to remain as citizens while offering no such path to a Muslim who may be ruled as an illegal alien in the NRC process.(With agency inputs) Read the full article

[brajeshupadhyay]

"I left the JNU campus a month after the violence… out of fear," says Surya Prakash, a visually-challenged student of Jawaharlal Nehru University enrolled in a PhD course. The reason? "Some people had entered my room and brutally beaten me up with iron rods." He refers to the violence that took place inside JNU campus on 5 January. Even though it has been over four months since the incident took place, it is still crystal clear in his memory. "I was sitting inside my room in the Sabarmati Hostel, studying, when I heard loud noises coming from the outside. I didn't know who those people were, but they broke open the door of my room and entered. They beat me ruthlessly, and for no reason. I am a neutral, common student who has no links with any political parties on the campus," he recalls, "After I told them that I was blind, one girl among them said, 'Andha hai toh kya hua? Maaro saale ko (So what if he is blind? Beat him up)!'." He is now in Uttar Pradesh's Deoria, his hometown. "Soon after the incident, I packed my bags and came home out of fear. After the incident, nobody slept alone in my hostel. Nobody went to the washroom alone. They would relieve themselves in buckets in their rooms instead of venturing out." But it's not just the incident that's on his mind these days. It's also the "inaction" of the police. "I complained about the incident, the police came to my room, the crime branch came, the media came — all of them said I would get justice. But to date, nothing has been done. My offenders have gone unpunished," he laments. Surya believes that the police was involved in the violence that evening. "Unidentified people entered the campus in hundreds that day, with lathis, iron rods and hammers. How did they manage to do that when the police were present on campus? They themselves were involved in the violence by giving those people a freehand." Around 30 people, including teachers and students, were injured in the violence unleashed on them by "masked men and women" with lathis and iron rods. The violent episode lasted for nearly two hours, during which university property was also damaged. What happened on 5 January? Sucheta Talukdar, counsellor at the School of Social Sciences recalls, "As soon as we learned that some goons had entered the campus, all the campus lights went out. A mob of more than 50 people came and started hurling stones at us. There was chaos." According to her, she could recognise some of the members of the mob as JNU students who are part of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidhyarthi Parishad (ABVP). "We got really scared because we had never witnessed such a thing on campus before. One student held my hand and said, 'Sucheta bhaag, ye log maar daalenge tujhe (Sucheta run! Otherwise these people will kill you)'. And looking at the lathis and rods in their hands, I got scared and hid at a dhaba. I narrowly escaped getting hurt, but many others actually were badly injured," she says. At the time of the attack, Talukdar was at Sabarmati Tea Point, responding to a Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers' Association (JNUTA) call for a peace march held in response to the violence that took place the previous day. The day before the violence Apeksha Priyadarshi, a PhD student at the School and Arts and Aesthetics Department in JNU, recalls the day before the major violence took place, "We had been striking on campus for months due to the fee hike. On 1 January, the administration opened up registration without resolving the main issue of the fee hike — a roughly 900 percent increase." After registration began, the Jawaharlal Nehru University Student Union (JNUSU) called for non-compliance with the registration process, demanding that the new hostel manual be rolled back. "There was a group of almost 15 people moving around the campus, beating people. They attacked the areas surrounding the School of Languages, School of International Studies and the School of Biotechnology," she says. According to her, in an attempt to stop the attackers from beating up her friend, she was attacked. "They started beating me with their bare hands. On that day, most of the violence was with bare hands and not with objects such as lathis and rods as we saw the next day — that day, they were all prepared." She says that the reason for the violence on 5 January was what happened a day earlier. "The student body had refused to give in to the administration's demands and register for the examinations. The group that beat up students was acting at the behest of the administration. That's why it stepped in to stop us from resisting the administration's move to increase the fee," she claims. "The collusion between the security personnel, the administration and the [group allegedly comprising] ABVP members was very clear that day. Even the police never converted our complaints into FIRs, because it knew that it would have to take action on an FIR," she adds. What led to the violence? Before the major violence took place, JNU had been the site for an anti-fee hike protest for around three months. Students were protesting what the JNUSU dubbed the "privatisation" and "commodification" of education. The protests involved multiple negotiations with the Ministry of Human Resource Development focussed on reducing fees. On 1 January, registration for the new semester had already begun, which led to the JNUSU calling for a boycott of the registration process — with which many students complied. "If places like JNU don't raise their voice against the increase of fees in central universities, the impact will fall on thousands of other universities and poor students. At JNU, we have the privilege of being heard, so we made sure to protest the privatisation of education. Initially, they wanted to increase the fees by 900 percent, then it was reduced after negotiation. If the students are unable to pay the fees, what's the point in filling registration forms?" asks Aishe Ghosh, JNUSU president. However, Ritwik Raj, a member of ABVP and counsellor at the School of International Studies at JNU, believes that this was a wrong step. Raj claims that the Left is trying to defame the ABVP by creating propaganda against the RSS-affiliate. "People who have indulged in violence have done so over their own disagreements. Some have beaten up students who had demanded Kashmir's aazadi [freedom] a day earlier. But ABVP had nothing to do with it. We do not support violence, and there was nobody from ABVP involved in this," he says. According to him, the ABVP was attacked by the Left and that the former didn't resort to any violence. He explains, "We had a rational approach towards the protests. We supported the fight against the fee hike, but the students who didn't want to be part of the protest and wanted to study instead should not have been expected to do join in. They should have been allowed to sit in the library and fill the registration forms. Over 150 people in my department alone filled registration forms within a day. The Left felt threatened." In response, Ghosh says, "We didn't force students to boycott the registration process, we convinced them." In a reply to an RTI filed by Saurav Das, a member of the National Campaign for People's Right to Information (NCPRI), under the 'life and liberty' clause, the university said that the main server of JNU at the Centre for Information System (CIS) was shut down on 3 January and was down the next day 'due to power supply disruption'. Ghosh was also among those who were severely hurt during the violence on campus. "As a student representative, I chose to be at the forefront. I saw teachers and other students getting hurt as stones were hurled at us. Around 15 to 20 men gheraoed me and started beating me up. I tried to ask them what they wanted, but by then I was already bleeding. They had sledgehammers, lathis and rods," says Ghosh, who sustained injuries to her head and arms. "It was like they had a grudge against me and wanted to finish me off," she continues, adding, "I used to get rape and death threats for standing up to the administration." Police 'inaction' "The fact that no action has been taken against the perpetrators of the violence on campus proves that we aren't safe anymore and anybody can indulge in violence and get away with it," says Ghosh, opining, "Obviously, the police is very biased. Its press conference clearly shows that." A special investigation team headed by Joy Tirkey, DCP Crime was formed to investigate the violence. Five days after the incident, the Delhi Police's Crime Branch held a press conference saying that "nine suspects" had been identified. The police, accused of inaction when the masked mob managed to escape unhurt from the campus on the night of the violence after the attack, had not made a single arrest till then. In the press conference, the police had held responsible four Left organisations for the violence — the Students' Federation of India (SFI), the All India Students' Association (AISA), All India Students' Federation (AISF) and Democratic Students' Federation (DSF), but the ABVP was not named, even though many students claimed to have video evidence against ABVP members indulging in violence. No mention of outsiders having entered the campus was made. Ghosh, however, calls the list of suspects "unsubstantiated", saying, "The police commissioner came up with my name as a suspect in the press conference held in January. But to date, why haven't charges been filed against me? It is because they don't have evidence." An NDTV investigation on the matter a day later hinted at the role of ABVP members in the violence, but no action has yet been taken against any members of the ABVP. Among the FIRs filed against students by the administration, no member of the ABVP has been named. Sucharita Sen, a JNU professor who suffered a severe head injury during the violence recently filed a plea seeking the filing of an FIR against the 'wanton acts of violence' she suffered. In her case, as in many others, no FIR has been filed. She recalls, "I was among the first people to get hurt. When this mob entered the Sabarmati Tea Point, the JNUTA holding a peace march. I came forward because I felt they would not hurt women professors, and we also didn't want the students to come forward. But we were wrong, they started pelting stones at us, and some of those hit me in the head. I started bleeding profusely." Seeking an early hearing on the matter, considering that the case had been dormant for over four months, Sen had had moved an early hearing application before the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate, Patiala House Court. In response to Sen's plea, the Delhi court on Tuesday directed the Delhi Police's Crime Branch to file a status report in the JNU violence case. "Let a status report be called from the Crime Branch, New Delhi within seven days from today mentioning the details of the FIR and the action taken pursuant to it," the two-page order said, posting the matter for 18 May. The status report on the matter has already been postponed twice, once listing the matter for hearing on 25 April, and then to 18 June on the account of extension of the lockdown. Delhi Police PRO, MS Randhawa said, "The investigation is ongoing. We are hoping to haven a breakthrough soon."

http://sansaartimes.blogspot.com/2020/05/jnu-violence-four-months-on-police-yet.html