New Delhi: Students inside the Jawaharlal Nehru University here spent Monday in fear and anxiety — a day after violence erupted in the Kaveri hostel mess over their regular Sunday menu even as cooks in the hostel maintained that ABVP members were threatening them to not cook meat for at least a couple of days now.
One of the cooks at the Kaveri hostel mess, Manoj Kumar Jha said that the violence was a result of tensions that have existed for the last three days. He added that mess workers were threatened by ABVP members to not cook meat this Sunday as it coincided with Ramnavami and they would be holding a 'pooja' for it.
Jha said that the rule of the mess has always been to prepare non-vegetarian food items on Sunday for the students who preferred it. And while Jha and other mess workers Millennium Post spoke to said that they were not physically manhandled or hurt by members of the ABVP, they maintained that they had never seen such a ruckus over food on the campus before.
Meanwhile, Akhtarista Ansari, one of the students who was seriously injured in the head due to stone-pelting, said that members of ABVP had also manhandled the meat vendors who were inside the campus on Sunday to deliver the raw materials.
Ansari, who has now received four stitches on her head, said that the violence began around 3 pm and also alleged that members of ABVP beat students up brutally and also sexually harassed women students, adding that she had identified three of her attackers to the police.
Ansari added that the students trying to stop non-vegetarian items from being served in the mess also abused students, used sexist and casteist slurs, and shouted communal slogans in addition to indulging in physical violence.
Inside the campus on Monday, NSUI leader Prashant Kumar said that students belonging to the ABVP were trying to "malign" India's premier institution and hinted that the police might have been complicit in Sunday's violence, alleging that many personnel stood by as the violence unfolded. However, he added that students in the hostels were now doing fine.
Significantly, the ABVP insisted that they did not have a problem with non-vegetarian food being served in the mess.
Rohit Kumar, ABVP JNU unit president, claimed that seven days before Sunday, there was a General Body Meeting of Kaveri Hostel mess committee where it was unanimously decided that no non-vegetarian food will be cooked in the hostel mess on Sunday on the occasion of Ram Navami.
But Raghib, the mess secretary of the Kaveri hostel squarely denied that any such GBM was held and maintained that members of the ABVP only started calling for the ban on meat items from a day before Sunday — in line with what mess workers told Millennium Post.
PHQ protest ends in detentions
But even as the JNU Students' Union and left-affiliated student organisations called for the arrest of the ABVP members seen beating up students, their protest march to the Delhi Police headquarters on Monday was within minutes dismantled by police officials there and the protesting students were detained.
According to JNUSU Vice-President Saket Moon, as soon as the first of the protesters were detained from outside the headquarters, other students on their way to the protest were also detained and taken to different police stations nearby.
According to the student's union, several students were in the police station till after sundown.
While All India Students' Association members said that they were manhandled by the police, a senior officer denied this, saying, "We have detained them because they were trying to protest near the police headquarters. They were detained before they could reach the spot and taken to Tughlaq Road police station."
Among the around 70 detained protesters, 18 male and 6 female were taken to Tughlak Road police station, 21 male and 14 female were taken to the Chanakyapuri police station and 11 male and 2 female members were taken to Parliament Street police station.
Late on Monday night, the police said all detained students had been released and that they are registering a case under Sections 188, 323 of IPC for the protest.
(With inputs from
Naresh Biswani)