JNU violence by anti-Left group, admits police
37 people of WhatsApp group 'Unity Against Left' identified
Delhi Police on Saturday admitted its Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) has identified 37 persons from a 60-member WhatsApp group named "unity against left" and 10 of them were allegedly involved in the brutal assault that left 34 teachers and students injured.
This admission came from SIT head Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) Joy Tirkey, a day after he tried to link the January 5 violence inside the campus to the in-fight among the left groups, naming the university's student union president Aishe Ghosh and eight others, seven of whom belonged to the left parties.
Ghose debunked the photographs circulated by police, claiming these related to skirmishes before January 5 and not on the night of January 5 when masked persons went on a series of assaults on students and teachers.
Those identified by the DCP on Friday were Aishe Ghosh,
Chunchun Kumar, Pankaj Mishra, Waskar Vijay, Sucheta Talukraj, Priya Ranjan, Dolan Sawant, Yogendra Bhardwaj and Vikas Patel. None has been detained but they will be questioned, the DCP said.
He, however, said nothing about action against the members of "unity against left" group allegedly created against the left parties the same day of the violence. He just said 10 persons identified so far for the violence were outsiders and not the JNU students. They were wearing masks to escape identification.
Among those visiting the JNU on Saturday included Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, who spoke to Aishe Ghosh and congratulated the union for an uncompromised fight.
"Sangh Parivar was hoping to overcome the dissenting voices from JNU using muscle power," he said.
Earlier in the day, JNU vice-chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar held a meeting with the students, but JNUSU president Ghosh said she was not aware of any such meeting as none were from the union. She said the agitation would continue until the V-C is removed and the hiked hostel fee is reversed.
The vice-chancellor hinted on Saturday to search the hostels for the trouble makers who were not the JNU students but outsiders. "The problem is that many illegal students are staying in hostels. They could be outsiders, they may be participating in any possible violence because they have nothing to do with the university," he said, adding that he has, therefore, ordered a security audit of the hostels.
He also got a circular issued, cautioning the students against entertaining unauthorised outsiders in their hostel rooms as guests and asking them to provide details of such guests in the prescribed form. In a tweet, JNU dean of students said: "In case any outsider/unauthorised student/guest is found staying in the rooms (of any hostel at JNU), necessary action will be initiated against the resident student, as per administrative rules."
The vice-chancellor also blamed some teachers for supporting "activist students" for creating an atmosphere of terror in the university due to which many innocent students vacated the hostels.