What the media chooses to ignore - this time, it's gun-toters in a university

This is what happened at Jawarlal Nehru University, Delhi, on Sunday the 22nd of November 2009. Originally posted by my friend Srin on facebook, here - http://www.facebook.com/note.php?saved&&suggest&note_id=181353647538

Last Night

When I met Kar for tea yesterday evening she told me about this gherao she'd seen at the North Gate. Four men inside a police van, students milling around aimlessly and the main gate locked. Neither of us being in the mood for Renaissance art, we walked to the gate to see what was happening. Apparently these four Delhi types had come onto campus drunk and harassed some women who called the guards on them. Common occurrence, they get beaten up and kicked out but this time one of the smarties pulled a gun on the guard and so the police were called. Apparently, the police refused to lodge an FIR, so the crowd had surrounded the van and wouldn't let it leave.

The scene at the gate was quite cheerful, we stood around for a bit (I got into a fight) laughing at the poor fucks stuck inside the van and at their car which had been d-e-m-o-l-i-s-h-e-d c-o-m-p-l-e-t-e-l-y (we even took photos with the overturned car but that was later). There were people outside the gate and on the walls. Maia was taking photos from her perch on the wall. Sandeep Singh, the Student's Union President, got up on the roof of the van to address us, once in a while a roar went up, which we joined in even though we couldn't hear much of what he said.

Then we went back to dinner and came back, having accumulated Rajani and Dhawale on the way. About forty five minutes had elapsed. There were more people there when we returned, Karan went up to the car with Kar's camera to take photos of the people inside (Nitin Kapoor, Ankit Nanda, Amit Chauhan and Gagan Kumar), got some nice photos. Then we saw the van heave. Dhawale spotted Oompy in the middle of the crowd trying to stop people from pushing the van and then everything erupted. The gate opened, the van sped out, somebody chucked a stone and shattered the back window. And for a brief moment the crowd just inside the gate stood face to face with the RAF outside the gate. A crowd of students, most of whom were just bumming around on a Sunday evening vs. a posse of riot policemen, with helmets, sticks and shields. Then somebody chucked a stone, the police lathicharged and the crowd surged back. So we ran, laughing at the absurdity of it, I think most people were laughing. I stopped running because I didn't want to get caught in a stampede and one kind RAF uncle ran up to me and said "bhaago, bhaago". The police retreated and the crowd came back. This is when it started to get serious (and where this will get really incoherent). Both sides started throwing bricks at each other and the police lathicharged again. I ran up the side of the road to the faculty quarters. One enterprising young man was throwing chocolate bombs at the police on the road below, who were now beating up individuals, so a couple of policemen followed us up. There were about ten to fifteen more people outside the house where I went, the woman whose house it was pushed us in and told us to stay in. There were people inside who had broken noses, broken heads, broken chins etc. The door was open and one policeman came inside and tried to drag a boy out but the faculty member whose house it was screamed at him for coming inside her house (she told me later that he was drunk and said to her, "haath mein lathi hain, jahan chahe jayenge"). I left by the back gate and went back to the road. Kar and Karan were outside, both with streaming eyes. They had been teargassed. The police had retreated to the gate and the crowd had retreated too. Some students had been arrested. The crowd refused to disperse till the police left and the police refused to leave until the crowd had dispersed. Finally, the gates were closed after about an hour and the crowd had dispersed a little, most were at Ganga Dhaba (which is close to the gate) waiting to know what would happen to the arrested students. I left around 1130, things had still not been resolved.

I heard today that the arrested students had been brought back around 130, that Oompy had three sections of his right arm bandaged because he tried to save a girl from being hit, that another woman who had tried to prevent a fellow student (who she did not know, by the way) from being beaten up on the street outside had been dragged to a police van and the student who she had been trying to save threatened with a rape case. I heard this was the second time students had been lathicharged on campus, I heard the Vice Chancellor was not in the country and that the Dean of Students had also been beaten up. I also heard a lot of party politics bullshit.

One name that came up again and again while Sandeep Singh was trying to pacify the crowd was Manu Sharma (the man convicted for murdering Jessica Lall) and how he had gone free for several years. The prevailing sentiment was that if we let the van leave then these four guys would also get away scot free (somebody's daddy was somebody important, or rich, same shit in Delhi). The prevailing sentiment was that you can't trust the police. Both correct. In blocking the van from 330 in the afternoon to 930 at night, yes, we obstructed the police in it's work but there is still no justification for this sort of violence on a crowd that was largely peaceful.

Don't believe the news. Nobody I spoke to today thought we had "over reacted" (and I spoke to a lot of apolitical, peaceful people), we didn't start the fight and it could not have been a toy gun.

Edit:

To add to that, the father of the boy who pulled the gun out said that it was his son's "constitutional right to own a gun". Also, according to a DSU pamphlet I read some time after posting this, the police intervention happened because there was a Police Control van outside the gate that came in to protect these guys. Found in the car were some mall development papers. These are things that I have heard/read, might be untrue. I will put up the photos that Kar took when I get them from her.