India’s leading university Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), which is witnessing turmoil due to student protests against fee hikes and attacks on protestors by masked goons, on Tuesday clarified regarding its reply to a Right to Information (RTI) plea. It said the reply is regarding a specific location, as requested by the applicant.
The administration in its reply recently stated that no CCTV cameras or biometric systems were damaged in the first week of January.
The university added that all FIRs and other complaints filed against server room violence are in-line with the facts.
JNU clarifies on media reports on RTI filed over 3rd Jan incident at Comm&Info Services Data Centre premises.Reply of RTI was provided relating to the specific location and questions sought by the RTI applicant. All FIRs& other complaints filed with police are in-line with facts.
— ANI (@ANI) January 22, 2020
The reply is contrary to the claims made by the JNU’s Vice-Chancellor M. Jagadesh Kumar that students vandalised the server room damaging CCTVs and making the servers dysfunctional on 3-4 January. Several purported videos and pictures of the server had gone viral when the alleged incident took place.
In line with the alleged incident, an FIR was filed against suspected students including JNU Student Union President Aishe Ghosh. The Delhi Police also released a photograph of suspects allegedly aligned with communist parties that they claimed were party to the alleged acts.
Ghosh had sought the Indian Education Ministry’s intervention because of police complaints filed by the university administration against them.
According to the university’s version, a few students marked their protest against the hostel fee hike (which has been rolled back) were preventing students from registering for the winter semester. “They threatened guards, maltreated them and warned students against registering for the semester.”
After this incident, a few masked “goons”, allegedly belonging to the Akhil Bharatiya Vidhan Parishad (ABVP- the student wing of the nationalist and cultural organisation Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) barged onto campus on 5 January and assaulted students and teachers with iron rods and batons, leaving over 30 of them in need of hospitalisation, including JNUSU chief Aishe Ghosh.
The ABVP has denied any role in the incident, and no arrests have been made in this case yet.
