JNU attacks: One year on, no chargesheet, no arrests as students remain traumatised
New Delhi: One year after a masked mob entered the Jawaharlal Nehru University campus and brutally beat up students and professors in addition to vandalising hostel rooms of students, the Delhi Police is yet to file a chargesheet in the case or make an arrest. However, a year later, students at the campus stand disappointed and have said that they no longer expect anything progress from the Delhi Police's probe.
"It used to be a prestigious university but now this administration has made it nothing but a hollowed-out shell. From new education policies to the violent incident it's like everything is being webbed to finish-off JNU," Udita, a postgraduate student at the varsity said.
JNU, on January 5 last year, had turned into a battleground with unidentified masked men and women entered the campus and brutally beat up students and teachers inside. The mob had entered hostels and vandalised property, however, no action has been taken against this mob till now.
"From the afternoon since the attack started we saw the mob with rods and dandas. We tried calling the Vasant Kunj SHO but they did not respond. So many calls had gone out to them. We knew that an attack is about to happen and exactly that happened. But no one responded to our calls. Then in the evening ABVP students entered the campus from various gates and started beating up students and teachers while police watched as a mute spectator," Dolan, Vice President of AISA unit at the university said.
The student unions have been calling out Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the student wing of the RSS, for the attack. While some reports had eventually identified members of ABVP as part of the mob that had attacked students and vandalised hostels, no action against them has been taken by the police so far.
Subsequently, the police launched an investigation into the attack, as did the JNU administration. But nothing has come of those probes as of yet.
For many students, the attack still induces trauma. A student who didn't want to be named said that his hostel room was vandalised. "It is not every day we get to see such things," the student, said that he is not affiliated with any political party. "I admired the ideology of this university and could never imagine such an attack taking place there," he added.
Professor Sucharita Sen, who teaches at the Center for the Study of Regional Development, was seriously injured in the attack. She later petitioned a Delhi court over the "lackadaisical attitude" of the state machinery in investigating the attack and demanded that a chargesheet be filed against the attackers and the case expedited. The court, however, deferred the matter because of the pandemic.
On Monday, a small protest was also organised by the JNUSU and JNU Teachers Association. Both the teachers and the students have said that even though they don't have hopes from the state machinery, they will keep fighting.
