New Delhi: The Delhi Police Press conference on Friday evening, announcing what they hoped would be their first major break in the investigation of the attacks inside the campus of Jawaharlal Nehru University on Sunday evening, raised more questions than answers, with the added gaffe of having identified the wrong person in their photos as Vikas Patel, the ABVP member seen carrying a fiberglass baton, usually used by police for lathicharge.
While the police claimed that they have identified a group of students from four Left groups allegedly led by JNUSU President Aishe Ghosh first went to Periyar Hostel inside the campus between 1:45 pm and 3 pm on Sunday and allegedly vandalised university property there; they have said they are still investigating the main attack in which Ghosh was brutally attacked along with several other students and two senior professors of the varsity, leaving the question of who attacked Ghosh, students and the two faculty members unanswered.
Moreover, the photos and videos released by the Delhi Police in the Friday presser while showing Ghosh and some other members identified as affiliated to left groups near the Periyar Hostel, there is only footage of one of these students identified as an AISA member hurling stones with a stick in his hand. Neither footage shows Ghosh wearing a mask nor does it show her directly assaulting anyone.
Another question that has arisen out of the Delhi Police findings so far is that why law enforcement authorities have decided to focus on events before the main attacks perpetrated to disrupt the peaceful march by students and teachers at Sabarmati T-Point.
As a result of the January 5 incident, the Delhi Police has received 14 complaints, including one each from professor Sucharita Sen, who was also attacked, and Ghosh, but it is not yet clear why the police have not registered a single FIR based on these complaints. Of these, three are from ABVP students as well.
As of now, the team probing the case is looking into three FIRs, the first two based on complaints from the JNU administration about the vandalism at the server room on January 3 and 4 and one other FIR about the January 5 attacks, registered based on the complaint of a Delhi Police officer who was present at the spot.
Furthermore, while the police have named two ABVP members Vikas Patel and Yogendra Bhardwaj as suspects in the JNU attacks, they are yet to come up with where the probe into the evening violence inside Sabarmati Hostel is headed. The police also confirmed that Bhardwaj was the one leading the WhatsApp groups in the hours before the Sabarmati Hostel attack and that his phone's location placed him inside the campus at the time of the attacks.
Besides, while several students and teachers have said that outsiders were involved in the attacks, the police have maintained that all assailants were students and that no outsider was involved. They added that based on the questioning of campus security and reviewing their visitor logs, no outsider had come in, but several videos showed outsiders leaving the campus after the attacks.
Further, even if the Delhi Police narrative about the violence arising from a fight between two student groups is believed to be true, the investigators have not yet said how that would explain several professors being assaulted inside the campus. Neither does it explain why students would go all the way to the faculty quarters at New Transit House looking to beat up teachers.
In fact, while the Delhi Police's independent fact-finding committee to probe the case has reportedly shown V-C M Jagadesh Kumar sending a message at 6:24 pm to three senior police officers asking them to be stationed at the gates; the police have not addressed whether Kumar will also be looked at as a suspect in the case.
In addition, following an investigative report published on Friday showing an ABVP member and JNU student confessing to beating up whoever he could see in the campus on directions of a police officer, the Delhi Police has also left the question of whether certain police officials might have been complicit unanswered. Moreover, while the attacks were being perpetrated inside the JNU campus, multiple eye-witnesses have said that a large group of ABVP supporters had gathered around the main gate and were singling-out and attacking any opponent as a police force of around 100 saw what happened.
However, the police have categorically made it clear that the nine suspects named on Friday have just been asked to join the probe and that the investigation is continuing to establish the entirety of events on January 5. They added that another Press conference is on the way with further developments in the case.
But as far as the police investigation is concerned, they have also said that they have been unable to access any CCTV footage of the incidents and are using forwarded videos shared with them by the 35
witnesses they spoke to since the probe began, to crack
the case.