New Delhi:
The All India Students’ Association has accused ABVP members of assaulting one of their activists inside a hostel at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in the early hours of Thursday, a charge denied by the RSS-affiliated outfit.
A case has been registered and investigations is underway, police said. Terming the allegations as “baseless”, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad said if any incident has taken place, the university should conduct a fair probe. According to the Left-affiliated AISA, at around 1.30 am, eight ABVP activists went to post-graduate student Vivek Pandey’s room in Mahi Mandvi hostel and started threatening him. “Most of them were inebriated, drunk and carried alcohol bottles too. Soon six more people joined them and beat him up.
He was brutally thrashed by the goons in the presence of guards and JNU administration’s CCTV cameras. “One of the assaulters hit him just a centimetre below his eye with an iron ‘kada’. Pandey received multiple injuries on this face, head, arms,” the AISA alleged. The AISA also claimed that JNUSU Councillor Sucheta Talukdar and AISA activist Rajnish, who reached Pandey’s room to help him, were also abused and manhandled.
Pandey was immediately taken to the university’s health centre and then to the hospital for treatment at night, the AISA said. Doctors put six stitches on Pandey’s face, the AISA claimed.
The ABVP, however, said it “does not know anything in this regard but the Left-leaning organizations are raising baseless allegations in order to malign ABVP-JNU“. “If something really happened, the university administration must conduct a fair inquiry. Any further allegations with an intention to defame ABVP will lead to legal course of action,” the ABVP said.
In the FIR lodged at the Vasant Kunj north police station, Pandey alleged that around 15-16 people came to his room late night. They all were drunk and they started abusing him. One of them hit him on his face with a ‘kada’ which caused a deep cut, he alleged. Pandey claimed that he also recognised one of them as Kartik Krishna, resident of Narmada Hostel. A case has been registered under sections 323 (punishment for voluntarily causing hurt), 341 (punishment for wrongful restraint) and 34 (common intention) and investigation is underway, police said.
