Why JNU is sceptical of Delhi Police 

Detailed interaction with JNU students and faculty members revealed that most think that the JNU administration may have played an active role in the January 5 attack on JNU by an armed mob of 40-odd masked goons and the police may have lent a helping hand.

Delhi Police held a hurriedly arranged press meet where they listed out the nine suspects, mostly Left-wing students including members of the students union. JNUSU president Aishe Ghosh, who survived a murderous attempt, and general secretary Satish Chandra Yadav were listed as suspects. The press meet came just about an hour and a half before an explosive hidden camera expose was aired by India Today that put the ABVP in the dock. The purpose of the Delhi Police press meet seems aimed at mitigating the damage that the India Today sting operation would cause.

The printouts shown by DCP (Crime) Joy Tirkey at the press meet, naming the Left-wing suspects in attacking Periyar hostel in the afternoon of January 5, were totally identical to the ones tweeted on January 7 by ABVP’s national organising secretary Ashish Chauhan and its Delhi state joint secretary Anima Sonkar. The printouts carried the same markings, numbering and grammatical errors and even words starting with capital letters in the middle of a sentence. Tirkey also showed printouts of images of two ABVP activists but while he named the Left-wing student bodies, he did not name ABVP. The police also made a blunder and misidentified ABVP’s Shiv Poojan Mandal as Vikas Patel who is also a member of ABVP. The image used in AISA member Dolan Samanta’s case was not even from Periyar. It was an image inside the ground-floor lobby of the School of Social Sciences (SSS) 2 building, a good kilometre away from Periyar hostel.

These surely do not inspire much confidence in the sincerity and impartiality of the police probe. But students and faculty members on the campus have more to say about the role of police in aiding the violence on January 5.

Dharmendra, a student at School of Languages (SL), said, “From January 3 onwards, students protesting against the fee hike were repeatedly attacked and harassed by student members affiliated to the Akhil Bharati Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) in different parts of the campus. On January 5, Aswini Mohapatra, Dean of the School of International Studies, and a known loyalist of Vice-Chancellor (VC) Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar, even instigated the right-wing students to beat protesting students up. He was heard shouting, ‘I was ABVP, I am ABVP, I’ll always be ABVP.’ Students had reached out to Delhi Police even then. But there was no response.”

In this regard, one needs to know that Delhi Police had been maintaining a steady presence in the campus of around 10-15 policemen in plainclothes ever since the fee hike protests began more than a month back. “You can see them mostly hovering around the Pink Palace (JNU administration building),” said a senior faculty at the Centre for Historical Studies (CHS), SSS. The faculty members in JNU spoke to National Herald on the basis of anonymity. “We have been shaken up by the violence. It is not because of the administration’s wrath. It is because faculty members were singled out and assaulted. They even barged into some faculty members’ houses. Their children are in trauma. We do not want our family members to suffer this,” said another senior faculty from Centre for Linguistics and English (CLE), SL.

Sucheta Talukdar is a research scholar at CHS and is an elected JNUSU councillor from SSS who has been charged under IPC sections 145 (unlawful assembly), 147 (rioting), 148 (rioting, armed with a deadly weapon), 149 (every member who is part of an unlawful assembly is guilty of the offence committed in prosecution of the common object), 151 (Knowingly joining or continuing in assembly of five or more persons after it has been commanded to disperse) and Prevention of Damage to Property Act (Mischief causing damage to public property). She was hit in the head by one of the stones hurled by the armed mob and was thrown into a toilet.

So has been prominent AISA activist and research scholar Dolan Samanta, also from CHS. Samanta said, “On January 5 morning, considering we have been repeatedly attacked in our centres in the last two days, we formed a human chain in front of SSS 2 building. It was there that ABVP members Santu Maity, Suman Chakrabarty and Arup started shooting videos of girls. So, we asked them to delete the videos as they were shooting them without our consent and there was an altercation in the lobby of SSS 2 building. It is a still image of that altercation that the Delhi Police have shown as an evidence of my involvement in the attack on Periyar hostel.”

Samanta continued, “After that, the ABVP people dispersed from SSS 2 while we continued to maintain our presence there. At around 1.30 pm, six ABVP students, including Aditya Chaudhury, Raj Pandey, Raju Kumar and Nishant Vidyarthi, came in front of SSS 2 and pulled out iron rods from their trousers. But since the students were many, they were challenged. The campus security guards who are never seen when ABVP goons are beating us up suddenly appeared and rescued them from the clutches of the protesting students and they ran away to Periyar hostel.”

Talukdar said, “Aishe Ghosh told me at around 3 pm that a large group of people who were not students had gathered near the Pink Palace. Aishe sent a WhatsApp message alerting the SHO, Vasant Vihar Police Station and two other senior Delhi Police officials about the same at 3 PM. The message was read at 3.07 PM.”

Samanta took over: “It was just then news came in that Ram Prakash, a member of the NSUI, has been severely beaten near the administration block. So we students decided to move towards the hostels. But we were heckled at the administration building by ABVP members and supporters but managed to make our way. This was around 4.30 PM.”

Talukdar stepped in: “Just around the same time, people on the campus a bunch of outsiders had gathered near Periyar hostel. We were holding a peace march from the North Gate down the main road when known ABVP faces started pelting us with stones. Many were injured. At around 4.45 PM, a bus carrying some policemen came to Periyar. They told us, ‘We will protect you.’ They did nothing. The stone pelting continued. As some students were injured and even bleeding, we decided to hold a peace vigil near Sabarmati hostel T-point and moved away from Periyar.”

Samanta added, “Not just the police did not protect us, they stopped us from nearing Periyar where all these miscreants were huddled.”

An extremely senior faculty member in one foreign language centre actually saw what happened from behind the mob. Still in shock, he said, “I was at the Sabarmati T-point when at around 6PM, we came to know that a bunch of outsiders had gathered near Periyar hostel. So me and JNU colleagues Minakshi Sundhriyal and Garima Srivastava decided to go and see what was happening. As we took the right turn from the main road towards Periyar, we saw a large group of people, masked, smashing bikes parked near Periyar. At this point my colleagues moved back towards Sabarmati but I decided to move to a dark corner and see what would unfold.”

He continued, “The group came down the slope towards the main road. They stopped in the dark corner and retied the clothes on their faces. They were all well-built. There were two women. One was in a check shirt. The other one was very tall, almost 6 feet, and looked very strong. At least two people were wearing helmets. They all carried iron rods and wooden sticks. Then they trudged down down the road towards Sabarmati. At this point, the street lights went off. Some faculty members and students were coming towards Periyar whom they first rained the stones on. And then they ran together towards Sabarmati.

As I walked towards Sabarmati T-Point, on the way, I found Professor Saugata Bhaduri of CLE lying on the ground, unable to pick himself up. After helping him up and sitting him down on the pavement, I walked a few paces and saw my colleague Garima Srivastava amid the bushes. By then the mob had rushed towards Koena hostel on the other side of Sabarmati. As I dialled a student of mine to bring his car around so that we could take Saugata and Garima to the hospital, I saw the mob come down the slope and charge at Sabarmati hostel, smashing everyone and everything on their way. They were breaking cars, bikes, chairs, and they charged at the Sabarmati Gate.

As I walked towards Sabarmati T-Point, on the way, I found Professor Saugata Bhaduri of CLE lying on the ground, unable to pick himself up. After helping him up and sitting him down on the pavement, I walked a few paces and saw my colleague Garima Srivastava amid the bushes. By then the mob had rushed towards Koena hostel on the other side of Sabarmati. As I dialled a student of mine to bring his car around so that we could take Saugata and Garima to the hospital, I saw the mob come down the slope and charge at Sabarmati hostel, smashing everyone and everything on their way. They were breaking cars, bikes, chairs, and they charged at the Sabarmati Gate.

“They clearly had inside help from ABVP students of the campus who identified the rooms. Thankfully, we had pulled the male students out of their wing into the girls’ wing. Otherwise, they could have killed them,” said Samanta who claimed she saw JNU student Vikas Patel hurl the stone that hit Professor Sucharita Sen on her head. “They may have had handkerchiefs tied but we are doing politics here for long. You could make out it was him. Rajeshwar Dubey, an ABVP contestant at the last JNUSU election, hurled a mess plate at me. I have suffered soft tissue injury,” she added.

Two more senior faculty members, one from the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning (CESP) and CHS told National Herald that at around 11 PM, there was a large police force of around 50 cops and senior officers inside the premise at the North Gate. “We pleaded with them to come and conduct a room to room search to find the criminals. We said we would accompany them so that our students were not harassed. They agreed and started marching with us for 300 metres or so before turning back. We asked them why. There was no answer.”

Scores of students National Herald spoke to said that they saw the outsiders assemble in the quarters of none other than Periyar hostel warden Tapan Kumar Bihari. “They came out inebriated and with sticks in their hands. And they assembled in the dark corner,” said one resident of Periyar hostel on the condition of anonymity. At least seven others said the same. JNU Chief Proctor Dhananjay Singh was part of a WhatsApp group where the attack was planned. Both Bihari and Singh are known loyalists of the JNU VC. Sanskrit student Surya Prakash, a blind student and resident of Sabarmati hostel, says, “They beat me so much. They had no feelings. They were reeking of alcohol. I pleaded with them crying out I am blind.” Samanta says, “He was all swollen up.” Surya Prakash has been receiving threat calls for speaking to the media.

A resident of Munirka DDA flats who comes regularly to JNU for casual strolls saw an assembly of 30-40 people at the Saraswati Puram gate at around 4 PM that afternoon, parallel to the main gate that was locked by Delhi Police while a crowd of people shouting right-wing slogans gathered. A faculty member saw the same. “I saw them too. But that gate is near
the non-teaching staff quarters. So I thought it was some kind of
squabble between themselves,” he said. Throughout the mayhem,
the security guards belonging to a company called Cyclops, were absent from the scene. “They were seen moving away from Sabarmati, the epicentre of the attack,” said another CESP faculty member.

“In Sabarmati, the students had managed to catch five of these attackers. But a few policemen who were asking the attackers to disperse came and whisked them away. Delhi Police was totally hand-in-glove with the admin on this violence. Forty armed people do not come into the campus like that and then disappear with large police contingents at every gate of the campus. The lights were turned off as the armed mob approached Sabarmati. The administration is complicit too,” said another SL faculty member.

Former UP Police DGP Vikram Singh has called Delhi Police’s role shameful in the matter. “It needs to be probed. The police did not discharge its duty properly. It stood like mute spectators. A departmental enquiry should be ordered and action taken,” he said. He even spoke of terminating the services of errant officers.

An IPS officer who is a JNU alumni told National Herald on the condition of anonymity, “I have just heard this from my peers. I do not know if this is true. The Vasant Vihar Police Station’s JNU pointsman has apparently sought a transfer as he had communicated all intelligence on the build-up many hours in advance to the authorities concerned. But they were not acted upon. The police knew everything.”

Nearly all JNU students and faculty members said they did not expect Delhi Police to conduct a fair probe. They insisted on an impartial judicial probe into the mayhem on the campus on January 5.