A 22-year-old postgraduate student from Assam was allegedly assaulted by five peers at Indira Gandhi National Tribal University (IGNTU) hostel at Amarkantak in Madhya Pradesh's Anuppur district, following which the five were expelled and booked, an official said on Thursday.
The incident comes close on the heels of the death of student Anjel Chakma, from Tripura in the North East, in Dehradun in Uttarakhand last month, causing national outrage and triggering calls for action and laws against such hate crimes.
An FIR was registered against the five accused students shortly before midnight on Wednesday on the complaint of Hiros Jyoti Das, a postgraduate student of economics from Assam at IGNTU, Anuppur Sub-Divisional Officer of Police Naveen Tiwari told PTI.
The accused were booked under sections 115(2) (voluntarily causing hurt), 296 (obscene acts and words), 351(3) (criminal intimidation) and 3(5) (common intention) of Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), he said.
"The university informed us that the five students were expelled by the disciplinary committee from the university a day earlier. We registered the FIR after receiving a complaint from Das. As per Das, when he was returning to his hostel room from the washroom, the accused allegedly asked him where he was from and what he was doing at the university. They then assaulted him around 4 pm on Tuesday," the officer said.
"The victim told them he had been studying at the university for the past three years. He has claimed he sustained injuries to his eyes, lips, nose and temples after being hit with a bracelet. He has named Anurag Pande, Jatin Singh, Rajnish Tripathi, Vishal Yadav and Utkarsh Singh in his complaint," the official informed.
Asked whether racial slurs were used during the incident, Tiwari said the matter was under investigation.
"The motive behind the assault would be clear after questioning the students. Das' medico-legal certificate report is awaited," Tiwari added.
Attempts to contact Das and IGNTU Registrar Professor NS Hari Narayana Moorthy were unsuccessful. Prof Moorthy did not respond to Whatsapp calls and messages.
Meanwhile, the Madhya Pradesh Congress slammed the ruling BJP over the incident.
In a statement, Leader of the Opposition in the state Assembly Umang Singhar alleged that some unruly students at the IGNTU hostel made racist remarks against Das and assaulted him when he protested.
Some youths linked to the ruling party consume drugs on the campus and assault students, while the university administration carries out only token action in the name of disciplinary proceedings, Singhar alleged.
He alleged the university, established to impart higher education, had been turned into a hub of the BJP and the RSS, and irregularities and incidents keep surfacing.
The Congress and the RSS-affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Vidhyarthi Parishad, in separate statements, collectively deplored the atmosphere at the IGNTU campus alleging it has become a haven for "anti-social elements, drunkards and junkies".
The ABVP submitted a memorandum to the Anuppur Superintendent of Police protesting the assault. ABVP activists alleged an atmosphere of fear was steadily building up at the university due to the increasing presence of anti-social elements, leaving students feeling unsafe.
The entry of such elements into the campus has led to a rise in the consumption of narcotic substances, resulting in serious incidents frequently, it claimed.
"If things don't improve at the central university in two weeks, we will launch an agitation," Anuppur district ABVP organising secretary Shivendra Chaturvedi told PTI.
In the incident in Dehradun in Uttarakhand, Anjel Chakma (24), a final-year MBA student from Tripura, was allegedly attacked with a knife by some youths at a private university there on December 9. Chakma died on December 26 after undergoing treatment for 17 days.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
