For pre-mob violence, JNUSU chief held suspect

Police identify 9 for campus ruckus before Sunday evening attack

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Call off stir, fee demand okayed: HRD to students

New Delhi: The HRD Ministry held a series of meetings on Friday with the JNU Vice Chancellor, students union and later the UGC on the JNU fee hike issue and appealed to the protesters to call off their agitation, saying their basic demand of fee revision has been agreed to by the university. Ministry officials told the students that they were not supposed to pay utility and service charges and the cost will be borne by the University Grants Commission as promised earlier.

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We did nothing wrong: Ghosh

“Let the police produce the evidence. We have no fear. We have not done anything wrong,” Aishe Ghosh, JNUSU chief

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ABVP too denies involvement

New Delhi: The ABVP on Friday claimed that its activists, whose names have been mentioned by the police as suspects in the JNU violence case, were not involved in the January 5 attack on the campus and it will share evidences to that effect with the police.

Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, January 10

Five days after 35 JNU students were injured in a mob attack, the Delhi Police on Friday named nine suspects, including varsity student union chief Aishe Ghosh, for campus violence. Among those named, seven belong to Left groups while two are affiliated to the ruling BJP’s student wing ABVP.

DCP, Crime Branch, Joy Tirkey also released circled photographs of student suspects in the January 5 campus violence that preceded the evening attack on JNU community by a mob of masked armed men.

Citing insufficient evidence, the police did not give details of the Sunday evening attack. They had earlier issued appeals to public for help with information about the masked men. No arrests have yet been made for the January 5 evening riot in JNU.

Tirkey, meanwhile, said today that Ghosh and students mainly affiliated to Left organisations attacked those on campus who wanted to register for the winter semester.

The officer specifically mentioned the Student Federation of India, All India Students Federation, All India Students Association and Democratic Students Federation as the groups behind the campus scuffles that ended in the Sunday riot.

“A large number of students wanted to register for the winter semester from January 1 to 5 but the Left groups and their sympathisers did not allow the students to do so. Members of these groups attacked the university server room to stop the online registration and enforce a strike over the protest against the hiked fees,” Tirkey said.

While Ghosh rejected the charges, saying that she was a victim and not a perpetrator, cops said they had not yet detained anyone and would send notices to suspects before interrogating them.

Among suspects named are Ghosh, Chunchun Kumar, Pankaj Mishra, Waskar Vijay, Sucheta Talukdar, Priya Ranjan, Dolan Sawant, Yogendra Bhardwaj and Vikas Patel. Bhardwaj and Patel are from the ABVP and the rest from the Left-led groups.

Ghosh said no union member had done anything wrong. “I still have my blood-soaked clothes and I have the evidence of how I was attacked. We believe in the law. Let the police produce the evidence. We have no fear. We have not done anything wrong,” she said.

The Delhi Police statements on student suspects today were limited to campus scuffles preceding the January 5 campus violence and rioting by masked persons who entered the JNU around 6 pm.

The Delhi Police were accused of failing to prevent this attack.

Even today Tirkey said the police were facing difficulty in detecting the masked persons due to “lack of security footage, authenticated video recordings and witnesses”.

The police action gave the ruling BJP ammunition to attack the Left-led JNUSU, with former HRD Minister Smriti Irani saying the “Left design in JNU unmasked. They led mobs of mayhem, destroyed public property paid for by taxpayers, disallowed new students from being enrolled, used the campus as a political battleground. #LeftBehindJNUViolence becomes public knowledge as @DelhiPolice releases evidence.”

The Congress on the other hand counter-attacked the ruling BJP, accusing Home Minister Amit Shah of preventing an impartial police probe into the matter.

Congress leader Ajay Maken said: “The police conducted a shoddy investigation influenced by the government. Delhi Police Commissioner should be removed immediately so also the JNU Vice Chancellor. The role of Home Minister Amit Shah should be probed because the Delhi Police are under him.”