Student Groups Condemn Assault on Protesting Students at Jamia

NEW DELHI – Student groups the SFI (Student Federation of India, AISA (All India Student Association) Pinjra Tod, Fraternity Movement and the SIO (Student Islamic Organisation) have condemned the attack on students and demanded swift redressal  extending support to the protesting students.

Students at the Jamia Millia Islamia, who were protesting against the university administration for allowing Israeli event in the campus, said that they were attacked by the “goons hired” by the JMI at campus when they were protesting.

“We were silently taking out a march to the VC’s office along with almost 700 students when we were attacked. Boys claiming to be university students started beating us up with leather belts. Many women were roughed up and molested by these boys,” Ragini, a member of the feminist collective Pinjra Tod, was quoted by The Citizen as saying.

Syed Azharuddin (General Secretary SIO of India) while speaking to media at a press conference in New Delhi on Wednesday said that his organisation will take the issue to the President of India.

Azhar said, today Jamia Millia Islamia students are on their tenth day of protest against frivolous show cause notices issued to 5 students. The student community of Jamia had marched yesterday to VC office in hundreds for a peaceful protest to demand the revoking of these notices. While the sit in in front of VC office was going on a group of goons brutally attacked the students, including female students, with belts, lathis and flower pots. Many female students were also manhandled, and a few students had to be taken to the nearby Holy Family hospital. In a tightly controlled campus where no outsiders are being allowed to enter, these kinds of goons could only have entered and attacked students with the knowledge and encouragement of the university administration.

Students are continuing with the protest in front of VC office, and they have called for campus-wide class boycott today (23 October 2019). They are also demanding the resignation of the officers who are responsible for this assault against students. Assaulted students have tried filed a FIR for a criminal case against the goons in Jamia Nagar police station but police received the complaint but didn’t filed the FIR yet (as on 12 noon, 23rd October 2019).

Extending its solidarity with the students, Fraternity Movement demanded  to “revoke show-cause notices issued to five Jamia students, arrest the criminals who attacked the students and suspend the administration officials who are behind these criminals, ensure there is no action taken against the students participating in the protests, restore Jamia Millia Islamia Students’ Union, a long standing demand of the Jamia student body to restore a democratic environment in the university”.