Attacker in video retweeted by JNU V-C from ABVP; joint secy admits to entry of armed members inside campus

New Delhi: A day after a video, posted on a micro blogging site, went viral with claims of "left students" violently assaulting a member of RSS-affiliated ABVP, a fact check has shown that the attacker in the video was, in fact, a member of the ABVP, while the person being assaulted was a member of AISA, both students at the School of International Studies, JNU.

Moreover, ABVP's Delhi Joint Secretary Anima Sonkar has admitted that one other ABVP member identified as Vikas Patel was one of the men seen brandishing a fiberglass baton, usually used by police personnel for lathicharges, in the hours leading up to the Sunday attacks. She also confirmed that she was an administrator of one of the WhatsApp chat groups — Unity Against Left, where the assault can be seen purportedly coordinated.

Sonkar claimed that they were asked to assemble in groups and arm themselves with weapons only in "self-defence".

As for the WhatsApp group, Sonkar said she was added to it and made an administrator on Sunday but did not see what the group was up to. She said, "When I noticed some strange activity on the group, I and other office bearers immediately left."

But two other members of ABVP, Vikas Patel and Yogender Shaurya Bhardwaj, both students of JNU were part of the group and Bhardwaj had, in fact, created the group, which was confirmed by several other members of the chat

group. Bhardwaj, Patel and Sonkar were part of the group as of 8:31 pm on the day of the attacks.

On the other hand, when a viral video claimed that "leftist students" had started the violence on Sunday, several eminent journalists retweeted it to a point when government-owned Prasar Bharti News Service also retweeted it, adding that it confirmed V-C Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar's version of events, which was then retweeted by senior officer bearers of the BJP and ABVP, including BJP IT Cell chief Amit Malviya.

However, a fact check showed that the attacker claimed by PBNS and V-C Kumar to be a "leftist" was, in fact, an ABVP member identified as Sharvender, a PhD student at the Centre for West Asian Studies in JNU's SIS. Several social media photos showed him at ABVP events, wearing an ABVP identity card, with one photo of him with the V-C himself.

Besides, the fact check also found that the person being assaulted in the video was a member of AISA and a post-graduate student in the same school.