Police brutality on protesting DTU students -Governance Now

Police brutality on protesting DTU students

Police beats up students protesting the conversion of Delhi College of Engineering to Delhi Technological University

Nitin Baraiya | April 1, 2010

On Wednesday morning a delegation of students visited Union HRD minister Kapil Sibal to seek his help but he didn't entertain us and said that this was a state government matter and we should approach law-courts.

This is despite the fact that Sibal had stated in a DCE alumni meet in 2005 that our college should be upgraded to the status of a central deemed university. The conversion of DCE to DTU is also a violation of the recommendations of Prof. Yashpal Committee, which were praised by Sibal who promised to implement them in his 100-days plan.

Then at 6:15 pm on Wednesday, around 500 students demonstrated at the office All India Congress Committee (AICC). We demanded that we be allowed to meet Smt. Sonia Gandhi.

Around 7:30 police lathi-charged us without any provocation from our side. President of DCE's Student Union Ravishekhar was helping a injured student when he was attacked by 5-6 policemen and was brutally beaten up

Ravishekhar, Pankaj Mishra, Navendu Saxena and the injured student were detained and taken to the Tughlaq Road police station. The injured student was not allowed to go to hospital for one and half hour.

The police continued with the lathi charge and 15 more students, including myself, were detained and were taken to Parliamentary Street police station. But the police didn't stop there. They chased the students up to India Gate, caught hold of some of use, and beat us up brutally.

By this time a bus full of girl students had left for the college. The girls then demonstrated whole night in front of Vice Chancellor Prof. Sharma's residence, missing their dinner and demanding his resignation. All the detained students were freed by 1:30 am; they joined the girls at 3:00 am this morning. At 4 pm today students marched from VC's residence to VC's office, continuing their demonstration.

We have met Rahul Gandhi twice, on 23rd February and on 8th March, 2010; even after his assurance a long time back we couldn't get any response yet. We are still helpless but we'll fight and won't give up.

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