Four days after the police assault on students of Jadavpur University (JU), the All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) government in West Bengal countered the students at multiple levels on Monday. Firstly, the father of the student, who was molested within the University campus, did a U-turn on Monday. He appeared in the rally organised by the student’s wing of the AITC and said that students should “withdraw” the ongoing agitation. Students of the University were demanding that a fresh probe committee be formed to look into the molestation case. During their sit-in demonstration, in the early hours of Wednesday, outside the administrative building, the police dragged and shoved the students out. The police action triggered protests in Bengal and rest of the country. On Monday, the father of the sufferer appealed to the protesting students.
“I met Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee today [Monday] who assured me that the culprits would be punished. I am not demanding V-C Abhijit Chakrabarti’s resignation and appeal to the students to resume classes,” the father said. At the end of last week, the girl’s father expressed his solidarity with the student’s movement on the JU campus. Explaining his change of stance, he said that earlier he had criticised Mr. Chakrabarti as the probe into his daughter’s molestation case was being delayed.
Counter rally At another level, in order to counter the students’ rallies, the student wing of the AITC, the Trinamool Chhatra Parishad (TMCP), took out a rally from the Academy of Fine Arts in central Kolkata to Mayo Road near Esplanade. Although the rally was intended to end at Raj Bhavan, the police stopped them at Mayo Road from where a TMCP delegation, led by its president Shankudeb Panda, met Bengal Governor Keshari Nath Tripathi.
New probe committee Earlier in the day, State Education Minister Partha Chatterjee set up a new five-member committee to probe the molestation case.
Headed by Calcutta University Vice-Chancellor Suranjan Das, the panel will consist of scholar Nrisinghaprasad Bhaduri, Bethune College professor Sangeeta Tripathi Mitra, St. Xavier’s College professor Ananya Chakraborti and Subiresh Bhattacharya. The new probe panel would submit a report on the case within 72 hours, Mr. Chatterjee said.
