Condemning the violence that took place in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi on Sunday, India's Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar said on Wednesday that such incidents have no place in educational facilities.
During a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Javadekar said: "There is no place for violence anywhere in the country. The places especially like universities where students go to get education cannot be a place for violence".
The minister emphasised that all the students, who covered their faces while wreaking havoc, will soon be unmasked in a police probe.
According to media reports, the state police will deploy facial recognition software to identify the culprits who were caught on camera instigating the violence on Sunday night.
The minister further added before the Sunday violence occurred that a students’ union on the campus, reportedly from the Communist wing, was preventing students from registering for the winter semester as a mark of protest against the administration’s decision to hike fees.
"Stopping students from registering themselves in education process is an uneducated attempt. It was widely published by you (media) how some people locked the server room and nobody was allowed to use it. This should not be forgotten", Javadekar said.
Meanwhile, talking about Sunday’s violence, police maintained that it was a result of clashes between two groups on campus.
While the protestors and students have been claiming that the miscreants belonged to the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), a student wing affiliated to the Indian nationalist organisation Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ABVP has denied any role in the violence.
Triggering nationwide outcry, masked men and women wielding sticks, rods, and sledgehammers entered the campus of JNU and went on a rampage assaulting students, including the president of the university’s student union Aishe Ghosh.