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Attempt to murder case filed against BJ college students Thursday, November 29, 2001

SOURCE - TIMES NEWS NETWORK
AHMEDABAD: The police cracked down on rioting students at B J Medical College on Tuesday night and registered a case of attempt to murder against seven of them.

The action was initiated after four students were severely beaten up and had to be hospitalised. One of them, Ashish Gamit, received serious head injuries and was brought to Civil Hospital profusely bleeding. All of them belong to the B block of the college hostel.

Acting police commissioner M K Tandon told 'The Times of India' on Wednesday that the strong action was initiated to bring the violence under control.

The seven students who have been booked under Section 307 of the IPC are, Ashutosh Jumar, Ranjan Chawala, Piyush Jain, Amardeep Bhatia, Tejas Hathani, Bhowmik Shah, Siraj Munshi and Siddharth Shah.

The new measures, however, failed to prevent more violence on Wednesday afternoon when about 10 students attacked their college mates belonging to the rival group, resulting in yet another head injury to one of the students.

The latest attack was allegedly in retaliation to Tuesday night's assault and took place in the presence of police personnel who were escorting the boys from the police station to the hospital for a preliminary check-up.

For the first time, college dean K V Bhatt broke his silence and said he is worried about the escalating violence, especially since the four students were beaten up outside the college campus. "If the violence continues like this, we don't want to have hostels at all. I would not have been sitting in this office had something untoward happened to the students."

Bhatt has written to the state health secretary seeking permission to shut down the four hostels which have turned battlegrounds. The college authorities have been threatening to shut down the hostel ever since the students went on strike on November 6.

They claim that Tuesday night's violence took place after some B block students went to the mess in D block for dinner. They were allegedly surrounded and thrashed. D block students, however, claim that the violence was initiated by the opposite group.

Students in the A block revealed that the college authorities had not taken half the measures they had promised, to try and curb the violence. "Where are the Gujarat Industrial Security Force personnel they had said they would employ? We have seen none of them." The college authorities had sought approval from the state government for at least 20 security personnel when the violence began. The A block students also alleged that their block had been sealed off by the police not allowing the inmates to go out. Those who were left outside the block were beaing beaten both by students of the B block and the police, they alleged.

Some of the students have even summoned their parents to the campus to pressure the authorities whom, they claim, are not listening to them.

If the parents do join the students, the situation will go back to square one when, at the beginning on the month, they had joined their wards in a hunger strike. A truce was arrived at, following the intervention of health minister Ashok Bhatt, just a day before the Diwali break. After the holidays, there were some sporadic incidents where the college authorities had locked the hostel rooms late in the night if the students were not in by then.

Meanwhile, the brighter students of the college are starting to complain about negligible academic activity in the last 30-odd days. As one of them put it, "I have put all my 25 years in reaching here. I can't forget the effort of all these years just because some of my college mates don't like each other. But there is nothing I can do. I feel completely helpless."

News Source : The Times of India [India's best Newspaper]

 

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