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SP men detained after sit-in outside Naini Jail
The entire delegation and their supporters were later detained by the police and taken to the Reserve Police Lines before being allowed to leave later in the afternoon
Not given permission to meet a student leader – Ajay Samrat – lodged in prison, a Samajwadi Party (SP) delegation, including two MLAs and an MLC, sat on a protest near the gates of the Naini Central Jail, on Thursday.
The entire delegation and their supporters were later detained by the police and taken to the Reserve Police Lines before being allowed to leave later in the afternoon.
The delegation then went and met Prayagraj police commissioner Ramit Sharma and handed over a memorandum demanding the recent fee hike at AU be rolled back and cases registered against students recently be quashed.
“The recent actions clearly show that the BJP-led state government is against students and their interests. The delegation that had arrived to meet Samrat on the instructions of SP chief Akhilesh Yadav was not allowed to meet him. When the delegation members sought a written reason for being denied permission to meet the student leader, the jail and the district administration gave no reason for it,” Hamza said.
The delegation members including MLAs RK Patel and Hakim Lal Bind, MLC Man Singh Yadav, former Allahabad University Students’ Union president Hemant Singh ‘Tunnu’, party spokesperson Manoj Kaka, former general secretary of Yuvjan Sabha Uday Prakash Yadav and student leader Adil Hamza. They were backed by over a dozen members of the SP and the Samajwadi Chhatra Sabha, the students’ wing of SP, who raised slogans against the state government and the administration during the sit in.
On July 11, a student of Allahabad University’s Centre of Media Studies Ashutosh Dubey had collapsed and died on the AU campus. The next day, on July 12, a mob of students allegedly led by Samrat and his aides had created ruckus at AU claiming negligence of the administration in providing ambulance in time for the student.
According to AU officials, the mob had damaged properties and tore registers besides assaulting, misbehaving with women teachers and snatching away their cash and jewellery. A video of manhandling with teachers at Sanskrit department of AU had also gone viral on social media.
An FIR was lodged on July 14 against six named and 20 unnamed persons for July 12 vandalism at AU premises on the complaint of AU proctor. Police later arrested two persons including Jitendra Dhanraj and Ajay Yadav Samrat on July 15. The name of Jitendra Dhanraj had surfaced during investigation, and he was arrested near Chaitham Lines following a tip-off. Ajay Yadav Samrat was named in the case lodged on complaint of AU proctor Rakesh Kumar Singh.
