JNU violence case: Will cooperate with police in probe, say AISA members named as suspects

Members of Left-affiliated AISA, who were named as suspects in the JNU violence case, on Friday denied any involvement in the January 5 violence on the campus and said they would cooperate with police in their investigation.

The Delhi Police on Friday released pictures of nine suspects in the JNU violence case and claimed JNUSU president Aishe Ghosh, a member Students' Federation of India, of the was one of them.

Of the nine, seven belong to left-leaning student organisations while two are affiliated to a "right-wing students'' body, police said.

Two of the suspects Dolan Samanta, a M.Phil student at JNU, and Chunchun Kumar, a former student of the varsity, who are members of the All India Students Association (AISA), denied their involvement in the January 5 violence and said they would cooperate with police.

 

Besides Ghosh, Samanta and Kumar, Priya Ranjan, Sucheta Talukdar, Vhaskar Vijay Mech and Pankaj Mishra have been named as suspects. Vikas Patel and Yogendra Bharadwaj, both from the RSS-affiliated Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), are among the nine suspects in the case.

The photos shared by police is from the School of Social Sciences and of January 5, Samanta claimed.

"We had made a human chain outside the school's building against the ABVP violence. The person who is wearing a muffler in the picture was trying to make our videos despite us not stopping any student from entering the building and we were both comfortable with it," she said.

She claimed one of the members of the Gender Sensitization Committee against Sexual Harassment, Shreya Ghosh, asked him to delete the video.

"We knew his affiliation and we were stopping him from making the video. The police are trying to twist the story. Delhi Police has been complicit in this incident. Why are these things happening?" Samanta asked.

She said she covered her face as it was cold and being a known face from JNU, anyone could "recognise her by her eyes".

Samanta said she was nowhere near Periyar Hostel when the incident happened and in fact, when the masked mob entered the Sabarmati Hostel, she was inside the it and was assaulted.

"I have submitted my complaint to police. I have not got any notice from them for questioning till now but I will cooperate with the probe," she said.

Kumar, whose name has also been released by police said the investigation is "politically biased".

"The police were under pressure and they stood at the main gate when the violence was happening inside the campus. I had nothing to do with the violence. They have even named Aishe who was injured," he said.

A professor, who knows Mech, said, "I can't recognise him from the picture. We do have a student named Vaskar Mech in the School of Arts and Aesthetics".

"I saw him being beaten up on Saturday and I was told by his friends that he had left the same day in the evening for North Campus. He told me himself that he was not on campus. I met him yesterday and as I was worried, I asked him about his health," she said.

Talukdar, a masters student at JNU, who was named by the police, concurred with her fellow students and called the investigation "biased" and "unfair".

"We are the victims. We have faced attacks from ABVP goons, police, our administration and the security guards. We have taken out marches against the hostel fee hike issue and have been lathicharged," she said.

She said that on Sunday, she was injured in the stone-pelting at the Sabarmati T-point in the campus and a student had saved her by helping her to hide below the kitchen sink of the Sabarmati Dhaba.

"We have been fighting for a cause. There is an attempt to divert attention from it," she said.

ABVP's Bharadwaj refused to comment on the matter.