After JNU it is AMU now, fate will be the same too




According to AMU students, BJP workers attacked AMU students and threatened by firing at them continuously (Photo: Twitter)

After sedition charges on Jawaharlal Nehru University students now it is turn to Aligarh Muslim University’s Fourteen students. On Tuesday evening, fourteen students were booked for sedition after clashes that followed a confrontation with journalists from news channel Republic Bharat a Hindi section of Arnab Goswami owned Republic TV. Recently, A Delhi Court had asked Delhi Police to register an FIR against Arnab Goswami for illegally airing information from the Delhi Police investigations into the death of Sunanda Pushkar, wife of Congress leader Shashi Tharoor.

The police filed a First Information Report against the students based on a complaint by Bharatiya Janata Party Yuva Morcha district leader Mukesh Lodhi.

Since, the new government of Yogi Adityanath came to power, Aligarh Muslim University has been a soft target to instigate Hindu Muslim issue in India.

According to a report in Scroll, News about a fracas on campus began to emerge early on Tuesday evening when a student posted a tweet accusing a Republic TV crew shooting on campus of referring to the institution as a “university of terrorists” in an attempt to elicit a reaction.

The university’s students union called the FIR “false and fabricated” and claimed that the Republic TV team and “some associates of RSS [Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh] and BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party] entered the campus with malafide intention”.

“They were asking farcical questions and labelling AMU with terror and anti-national activities,” the union’s president, Salman Imtiaz, said. “When the AMU students challenged the said media reporters on its manner of questions and asked them to seek permission from relevant authorities, the reporters heckled the students and the female reporter threatened to frame false sexual harassment charges against the students.” Scroll reported.

“I was reporting live on air when a person who identifies himself as Azeem Akhtar, Security Officer AMU came forward & asked us to stop. Since I was live on air, I didnt respond to what he was saying. He then got agitated that he was being ignored& began messing with our equipment” Nalini, the responsible crew member of the Republic channel for the fracas tweeted.

According to Imtiaz, the university staff asked the crew to stop the reporting but they “continued with the aggression”. “This led to the disruption in the campus,” he said. It was followed by a reaction from a well-armed gang of BJP terrorists who started beating AMU students and were beaten in defence.”

The person who filed the FIR against the 14 students was allegedly part of the crowd. His FIR claimed that “hundreds of AMU students” surrounded his vehicle and assaulted him and fired at him. The FIR accused the AMU students of shouting pro-Pakistan and anti-India slogans.

Following the incident, the university administration filed two separate complaints with the police – one against the journalists for entering the campus without permission and the other against unidentified miscreants for indulging in arson and unlawful activities, The Indian Express reported.

Hamza Sufyan, the vice president of the students’ union, told The Indian Express, said that fracas had erupted during a student event about oppressed sections of the society. “The reporters from Republic TV did not have permission to cover the event or enter the university premises,” Sufyan alleged. “When they were stopped by the proctor, they misbehaved with university officials and got into a confrontation, raising objectionable slogans calling AMU a ‘university of terrorists’.”

AMU Students Union Secretary Huzaifa Aamir has also released a video in which he has accused that illegal Sedition charges were pressed against them on the complaint of BJP leader. “We are not going to be bowed down by all these Pressure Tactics of the District Administration which is hand in glove with the ruffians who are trying to vitiate the peaceful atmosphere of the University. We will Fight and We will Win!” he said in his video.

The same had happened on JNU three years back when sedition charges were framed on JNU students though police could not file a chargesheet on time aginst them and the matter is still sub judice.

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