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‘Bone chilling’: Sonia Gandhi targets govt after brutal attack on JNU
Congress president Sonia Gandhi accused the BJP government of supporting lumpen elements who are busy raiding campuses and colleges across the country.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Monday hit out at the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party over the attack on teachers and students at the Jawaharlal Nehru University on Sunday, underscoring that the violence by India’s young on the campus was “horrifying and unprecedented”.
“Everyday campuses and colleges are raided across India, either by the police or lumpen elements with the support of the BJP government,” the Congress president said.
Sonia Gandhi’s pointed remark on raids by the police was a reference to the crackdown by the police that targeted students at Jamia Millia Islamia University and Aligarh Muslim University protesting the amended citizenship law.
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Gandhi’s statement on Monday was a follow-up to the opposition’s severe criticism of the government and the police for its handling of the violence. JNU students had alleged that the police had given masked goons a free run to target students and teachers.
“The voice of India’s youth and students is being muzzled everyday. The horrifying and unprecedented violence unleashed on India’s young by goons with active abetment of the ruling Modi Govt is deplorable and unacceptable,” Sonia Gandhi said.
The first reports of violence in JNU’s sprawling campus in the national capital came a little before 8 pm when videos showed groups of masked individuals entering hostel with bats and hammers. The university’s students’ union president Aishe Ghosh was seen with head wounds after the assault; the union accuses right-wing ABVP of attack. Over the next few hours, masked vandals moved room-to-room as students locked themselves in hostel rooms.
On Monday, the Delhi Police which could not arrest the vandals, said a case of rioting and damage to property had been registered against unnamed people.
The violence has set up a war of words between the opposition and the ruling BJP at the Centre. The BJP has accused students from Left leaning students’ groups of orchestrating the violence.
But the anger over the violence the night before has resonated in universities across the country. In Mumbai, hundreds of people came out to express their solidarity with JNU students.
Gandhi described yesterday’s “bone chilling attack” on students and teachers “a grim reminder of the extent the Govt will go to stifle and subjugate every voice of dissent.“
Students and youth need affordable education, a deserving job, a promising future and a right to participate in our thriving democracy. “Sadly, Modi Govt seeks to suffocate and restrain each one of these aspirations,” she said, demanding an independent judicial inquiry into the “sponsored violence in JNU”.
