Delhi police allow ‘nationalist mob’ to attack JNU, vandalise hostels

Barely 10 days after Home Minister Amit Shah publicly declared that Delhi’s ‘Tukde-Tukde gang’ needed to be taught a lesson, a mob of masked and armed men walked into the JNU campus and assaulted students and teachers on Sunday. They ransacked the hostels and teachers’ quarters, seriously injured at least 20 students and teachers, were said to have attacked students with acid bulbs before calmly walking out.

Delhi Police claimed everything to be normal in the campus and told the media that unless called, they couldn’t enter the campus. At Jamia Milia University last month, their version was different. They had then said that they needed nobody’s permission to enter the campus.

Even more ironically, last week Delhi Police did not allow people protesting against police action in Uttar Pradesh to gather outside UP Bhavan with placards. Policemen actually dragged out the protestors from autorickshaws and detained them. But on Sunday they seemed to have no problem with people carrying sticks, iron rods & cricket bats roaming inside & outside the JNU campus.

One of the JNU teachers tweeted, “Completely planned attack, hundreds of outsiders were brought in early afternoon with sticks, and were clearly waiting for instructions. Police were parked outside waiting well before anything happened, and appear to have allowed the violence.”

Journalist Rana Ayub tweeted, “Am outside JNU. ABVP students shouting ' Desh ke gaddaron ko, goli maaro saalon ko' calling girl students, 'lashkar e tayyeba' ki pilliyaan”, beating students while cops are watching. Two men close to 50 years old wearing masks shouting ' Bharat mata ki jai'. I ask them why they are protesting; one of them said, "Mughalon ki aulaadon ko bahar nikalna hai".

Another journalist from TV channel Aaj Tak tweeted, “The moment I questioned law and order in JNU, the mob in the presence of police attacked me and my cameraman, broke my microphone, hurled abuses, called me Jihadi and Naxali. I asked a cop why they were silent spectators, their reply: Why did you go there?”

But even as the mob was on the rampage inside, a slogan shouting mob outside the main gate gave their identity away. They manhandled journalists and opposition leaders including Yogendra Yadav, assaulted journalists, broke the camera of a few and raised slogans like “Gaddaron, JNU Choro” (Traitors, leave JNU). The aggressive mob stopped ambulances and medical teams from going inside and manhandled doctors and para-medics.

Policemen watched the mayhem in stoic silence and allowed the mob to walk past them. The complicity of the police also became apparent when they turned a blind eye to Yogendra Yadav being pushed to the ground. The policemen in anti-riot gear had assembled outside the main gate well before the arrival of the mob.

Within hours of the attack, social media was flooded with mobile video clips in which the masked men, and a few suspected women, are seen moving in groups inside the hostels, breaking whatever they could find in their way. By midnight, a semblance of order returned to the campus even as 18 students and teachers were admitted in the All India Institute of Medical Sciences with head injuries. Two of them were said to be serious.