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Cops lathi charge Left, BJP supporters in face off near Jadavpur University
The police first resorted to lathi charge at around 8 pm to disperse the BJP supporters and later on the students who were protesting Sunday’s violence at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University.
Police launched a mild lathi charge Monday evening when two rallies, one by leftist students of Jadavpur University and another by BJP supporters, came face to face near the university campus and refused to disperse despite repeated appeals, a police official said.
The police first resorted to lathi charge at around 8 pm to disperse the BJP supporters and later on the students who were protesting Sunday’s violence at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University that left about three dozen students and teachers injured.
The police said that mild lathi charge was the last option to avoid a major chaos as another rally by CPI (M) had come close to the place where JU students and BJP supporters had already come face to face despite barricades on the road. At least four students were injured in the lathi charge.
“We had no intention of launching a lathi charge. If anyone has got hurt we are ready to apologise,” said deputy commissioner of police (south suburban) Sudeep Sarkar.
Reacting to the lathi charge, education minister Partha Chatterjee said, “The police should have exercised restraint. I am informing the chief minister about the whole incident.”
The Jadavpur University Teachers’ Association and Calcutta University Teachers’ Association also issued separate statements condemning the attack.
Students of Jadavpur University had taken out a torchlight rally and blocked roads in southern Kolkata Sunday night itself as soon as news broke of the attack in JNU.
Throughout Monday, Left students of Jadavpur University and Presidency University, and Congress and Trinamool Congress (TMC)-backed students of Calcutta University (CU) and Rabindra Bharati University (RBU) took part in rallies in different parts of Kolkata, condemning Sunday’s violence.
Leaders of the ABVP, the BJP’s students’ wing in Bengal blamed Student Federation of India (SFI), affiliated to Communist Party of India (Marxist), for the violence in JNU but did not stage any agitation in Bengal till Monday evening.