JNU VC Now Focuses On Notices to Students For a Documentary Screened A Year Ago, No Sign of Najeeb
NEW DELHI: Jawaharlal Nehru Students who were under attack by the government and the administration as ‘anti nationals’ last year find themselves being embroiled in one case after another. The proactve Vice Chancellor has been digging out old issues to file charges against students, seeking explanations, and imposing fines that have scores of students now fighting cases in the courts.
A recent missive from the JNU Adminstration to a group of students opens an issue that was closed by the earlier Vice Chancellor over a year ago. This focuses on the screening of a short documentary ‘Caste on the Menu Card’ by students in the campus on November 1, 2015. Security personnel were sent to stop the screening with the authorities maintaining later that permission had not been given for the same. There was a scuffle, reported in sections of the media at the time, between the students and the guards after which the students formed a human chain to keep the security men away. ABVP students according to those present at the spot also joined the guards in trying to prevent the film from being screened.
The documentary on the beef ban was finally screened in the presence of a large group of students.The VC at the time, reportedly asked for an explanation. The students submitted the same. No case was filed and the matter was dropped. Or so the students thought.
Now over a year later, a few students representing different organisations have got individual notices asking them to explain the screening in person. Faculty members see this as part of the strategy to keep the students under pressure, and prevent them from taking part in any activities, or organising any events, that go against the positions being taken by the BJP and its affiliates outside the campus.
Sources in the campus said that earlier no such permissions were required, with the atmosphere in the campus promoting debate and discussion on all issues. Now the sources said, the effort is to close campus activities as far as possible, and keep the students involved in court cases and explanations.
Students said that permissions had not been sought for screening movies in campus. For this documentary, in fact, the warden had given permission but according to the authorities at the time he was not qualified to do so. Students claimed that these rules were now being enforced after the controversy over Muzaffarnagar Baaki Hai in the campus, and has been blocked repeatedly from being screened in campuses with the ABVP terming it ‘anti Hindu’.
JNU students, particularly those active on campus, are having a rough time with an environment of fear having been generated fairly successfully, more so with the disappearance of student Najeeb Ahmad who has still not been traced after a scuffle with ABVP students. Rs 10 lakhs has been offered for him, with the courts being moved by his family. It needed the direction of the courts for the police to act. A Delhi High Court Bench of Justices G. S. Sistani and Vinod Goel asked the police why its status report, filed in the court on November 22, didn’t mention the alleged on-campus scuffle between Najeeb and some members of the Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad, along with the injuries sustained by Najeeb for which he had to be taken to hospital.
The Bench raised questions about the disappearance saying what many in the campus and outside have been asking, “This is the national Capital. No one can just disappear from here. If Najeeb disappeared, then there is something more to that. All angles have to be explored. Forty-five days is a long period for someone to remain underground.” The Delhi Police insisted that he was not abducted, claiming that an auto rickshaw driver had said he had dropped Najeeb to Jamia Millia Islamia.
To this the Bench observed, “cut across all political barriers. Get him back. You will get your answers at either of two places: Jamia or JNU. No need to go to Aligarh or any other place so far.” The Justices also asked the police why it had waited till November 11 to interrogate those who had an altercation with Najeeb almost month earlier, that is the night of October 14-15, just a few hours before he disappeared.
Najeeb’s distraught mother Fatima bibi has been camping in Delhi since. She has been with the students protesting against the inaction by the JNU VC and the Delhi Police on this issue. She has been dragged and detained. She has been addressing press conferences, giving interviews when asked. She has been at the High Court. Now mostly in tears she has not given up hope, but as those around her say, the days are taking a toll on the mother who had a special relationship, in her own words, with her eldest born.