Clashes After Midnight At Kolkata’s Jadavpur University, Students Blame Police

mangaloretoday.com /India Today

Kolkata, Sep 17, 2014:  Students of Kolkata’s prestigious Jadavpur University have alleged that the police entered a building in the campus at around 2 am on Tuesday night to break up a protest and dragged out students and manhandled them.

 

35 students were arrested and many were injured and are in hospital.

"There were policemen, (but) there were goons who were without uniform claiming to be police, who massacred the entire university. Girls like me and everybody like me were hit by male policemen. There were only two policewomen. They didn’t touch us. The policemen randomly picked up people," said Anisha Mandal, an undergraduate student.

In protest, students blocked a major crossing in front of the Jadavpur police station for hours till Wednesday morning.

Some students have filed a complaint against police officers for molestation and against the university’s Vice Chancellor for calling the police.

The students have been sitting on protest at the main administrative building of the university since last Wednesday. They want an investigation into the alleged molestation of a second year student by boys from the university.

Yesterday, a large group of students surrounded the vice chancellor and other faculty members. The vice chancellor is believed to have called the police then.

The students claim activists of the Trinamool Chhatra Parishad - the ruling party’s student’s wing - also came in with the police.

Questioning the late night crackdown, the students also allege that many of them were seriously injured and had to be hospitalised. One of them is on ventilator support and another is partially paralysed, they claim.

"The police came and beat us up brutally. They behaved as if we were pieces of chicken. They caught us and threw us around," said Ronit Mukherjee, one of the protesting students,

"The girls were molested, I can state it. Whatever happened with them was molestation. I would like to add that the persons called police by us were not in uniform. We don’t know if they are Trinamool cadres or police," he added.

 

Courtesy: NDTV