Tear­ful stu­dents, par­ents and sym­pa­this­ers are brav­ing the bit­ing cold of a Delhi win­ter night seek­ing jus­tice against op­pres­sion by the Delhi Po­lice.  Ali­garh Mus­lim Uni­ver­sity, Ba­naras Hindu Uni­ver­sity and Dar-ul-Uloom in Luc­know, Mum­bai Uni­ver­sity, In­sti­tute of So­cial Sci­ences in Mum­bai and Ja­davpur Uni­ver­sity stu­dents in Kolkatta have protested in sol­i­dar­ity with stu­dents of Jamia Milia.

MUS­LIM RES­I­DENTS AND STU­DENT SUP­PORT­ERS FROM ACROSS DELHI and around are reach­ing the Delhi po­lice head­quar­ters with warm clothes an­nounc­ing that they would stay on till jus­tice is done. Down with Delhi Po­lice are rent­ing the air and tele­vi­sion screens in the coun­try are scream­ing the cries for jus­tice but there has been no of­fi­cial re­sponse so far.

In the mid­dle of the night, lawyers and par­ents are run­ning from one po­lice sta­tion to an­other urg­ing the po­lice to pro­vide wa­ter, food and med­ical at­ten­tion to stu­dents who were forcibly de­tained from within the li­brary and wash­rooms of the Jamia Milia Uni­ver­sity. Protest­ing stu­dents are seek­ing the pro­tec­tion of CCTV footage of the po­lice storm­ing into the Jamia Milia Uni­ver­sity.

As re­ported by so­cial ac­tivist Harsh Man­der and lawyer Choud­hary Ali Zia Kabir, who were al­lowed into the po­lice sta­tion only af­ter sus­tained per­sua­sion, with­out their mo­bile phones, they were not al­lowed to take sig­na­tures on any doc­u­ment in­clud­ing Vakalat­na­mas by the po­lice.

Ad­vo­cate Kabir has pointed out that they could count 28 stu­dents in Kalkaji po­lice sta­tion, in­clud­ing Chan­dan Singh son of  Lak­sh­mikant Singh who was a heart ail­ment and who stated that he was picked up from the li­brary where he was study­ing.  The ail­ing stu­dent re­quested that CCTV cam­era footage of the li­brary and the cam­pus must be seized to clearly show the storm­ing of the po­lice by CRPF and other po­lice per­son­nel.

Many of these stu­dents, who are at the Jamia po­lice sta­tion are se­ri­ously in­jured and may be taken to AI­IMS for a med­ical check-up. The po­lice have not so far given the names or num­ber of the stu­dents de­tained at var­i­ous po­lice sta­tions.

While talk­ing to the ac­tivists, Chan­dan fell from his chair and only af­ter sus­tained re­quest of the in­ter­venors, he was taken to the hos­pi­tal by the po­lice.

Mean­while, the Delhi Mi­nori­ties Com­mis­sion has in­ter­vened and has asked the Delhi Po­lice to im­me­di­ately re­lease the stu­dents from po­lice sta­tions and pro­vide med­ical aid to stu­dents.

The in­car­cer­ated stu­dents pointed out that the de­tained stu­dents were not protest­ing on the roads out­side the cam­pus. They re­peat­edly im­pressed upon the ac­tivists that the en­tire CCTV footage of the whole cam­pus in­clud­ing li­brary must be seized as ev­i­dence of their in­no­cence.

Stu­dents al­leged that the fe­male stu­dents were beaten up and even sex­u­ally ha­rassed by the male po­lice of­fi­cers. Even when the fe­male stu­dents locked them­selves into fe­male wash­rooms, the po­lice broke open the doors and as­saulted them.  Not only this, the para­mil­i­tary po­lice switched off the lights be­fore as­sault­ing the girl stu­dents so that ev­i­dence could not be recorded on CCTV cam­eras.

Shame on the pow­ers that be!