The Delhi High Court on Friday refused to grant urgent hearing to a petition moved by two Delhi University students seeking action against police personnel who had allegedly assaulted female students and journalists during the violence at Ramjas College on February 22.
The petition, moved by final-year students of DU’s Campus Law Centre Tarun Narang and Deepak Joshi, was mentioned for urgent hearing before a Division Bench headed by Justice B. D. Ahmed.
Public interest litigation
“What’s the urgency in this matter? There’s no urgency. It’s a public interest litigation. File it and let it come up for hearing in the course of time,” Justice Ahmed told advocate Vishnu Sharma, appearing on behalf of the students. The petition sought action against the police personnel on duty saying that they had “manhandled, roughed up, slapped and misbehaved with female students of DU, and also stopped journalists from covering the incidents on campus”.
“It’s unfortunate that female students were manhandled by the Delhi Police, who used excessive force on them, punched them and slapped them, and thus outraged their modesty,” the petition said, adding that the conduct of the police was against the code of conduct issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs and also a violation of the fundamental and human rights of the students and journalists.
The petitioners have also sought constitution of an independent committee of senior police officers to probe the allegation.
They also sought lodging of an FIR under various Sections of the IPC, including assaulting a woman with an intent to outrage her modesty, against the cops and others who allegedly harassed and assaulted the female students and journalists during the protest. They also urged the court to issue guidelines for law enforcement agencies while dealing with students and media on university campuses.
Large-scale violence
Ramjas College here witnessed large-scale violence between members of the AISA and the ABVP in the last week of February. The genesis of the clash was invites to JNU students Umar Khalid and Shehla Rashid to address a seminar on “Culture of Protests”, which was withdrawn by college authorities following opposition by the ABVP.
