As JNU student leader came under attack on campus, police filed case against her
The timestamp on the first information report or FIR shows it was filed by Delhi Police, which have been criticised for not acting on time to contain the violence, at 8.53pm when a masked mob went about beating students and teachers and vandalising JNU property.
On Sunday evening when violence was at its peak inside Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) campus, officers at the Vasant Kunj police station were initiating a process to book JNU students’ union president, Aishe Ghosh, and its other leaders.
The timestamp on the first information report or FIR shows it was filed by Delhi Police, which have been criticised for not acting on time to contain the violence, at 8.53pm when a masked mob went about beating students and teachers and vandalising JNU property.
Aishe Ghosh, who was hit by attackers on her head on Sunday, and other students have been booked for allegedly damaging the server rooms and manhandling security guards on Saturday.
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The JNU campus comes under the jurisdiction of the Vasant Kunj police station and officers are tasked to ensure a smooth law and order situation in the campus.
The FIR has been filed on the complaint of the JNU security personnel. According to the complaint, the admission process was halted on January 3 and January 4 because of the lockdown of the Communication and Information Service (CIS) building by protesting students.
The complainant has said that when some of them along with CIS staff tried to enter the building they were allegedly manhandled and threatened by students, including Aishe Ghosh and vice-president of the students’ union, Saket Moon.
Aishe Ghosh and Saket Moon, along with others, have also been accused of breaking glass door and fiber optic cables.
More than 40 hours after the incident, police are yet to arrest a single person from the mob, which entered the campus and assaulted students and teachers.
A team of the crime branch, which has taken over the probe, visited the university campus as part of their investigation.
The police have said they got the written permission from vice-chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar to enter the campus only at 7.45pm on Sunday.
However, in the FIR filed any another officer related to Sunday’s violence, the police admit they received a “request letter” from JNU at around 3.45pm, as soon as the first incident of violence was reported.
Ghosh has alleged that JNU administration colluded with the mob to “disrupt the students’ movement against the hostel fee hike”.
She also alleged that she had contacted the station house officer of the nearest police station, senior officers and the JNU security staff when she got to know about the mob entering the campus but got no response.
The Left-backed JNUSU and the RSS-affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) have blamed each other for the violence that continued for nearly two hours on Sunday.
Ghosh alleged that while some of the ABVP men were from JNU itself, the others had been called in.
“They first vandalised a car parked nearby before besieging us. My sister managed to escape, but my friend and I were caught by the mob. They first struck me on my head with a rod before kicking and thrashing me. I screamed at them that they couldn’t do that, but they didn’t stop,” she said.
She also named Ashwini Mohapatra, chairperson of Centre for West Asian Studies (CWAS), and accused him of assaulting students during a protest last week, a charge denied by Mohapatra.
JNU VC Jagadesh Kumar issued a statement on Monday that blamed the violence on students, who were agitating over the fee hike and had boycotted the semester registration.
