“What more does the police need in terms of evidence? Everything is crystal clear,” said Mohammed Minhajauddin on Monday who lost vision in one eye during the police crackdown at Jamia Millia Islamia on December 15.
Mr. Minhajauddin, an LLM student, was among many other students seen in a CCTV video of the research scholars library where police personnel are seen indiscriminately beating up people. He said, “A few of my friends and I were there since 2 p.m... We went downstairs in between and returned. We even have the CCTV footage of this which we have submitted to the court.”
One point of entry
Narrating the sequence of events, Mr. Minhajauddin said that by evening, the police had entered and spread across the campus and everyone was in a state of panic. “There were a lot of sounds coming and many students had switched off their laptops and were just worried about finding a way out,” he said. With many seeking refuge in the research scholar’s section, the door, which is the only point of entry, was latched from inside.
“But they [police] banged the door several times, broke the latch and entered,” he said, following which allegedly without any warning, the police personnel in the video are seen beating up people with lathis. He said that the police gave no instruction to leave the place and were simply thrashing everyone present there, allegedly also hurling communal slurs.
Speaking to CNN News18, Mohammad Mustafa, an M.A. student at the university who was reportedly at the library as well said that police personnel who entered and carried out the crackdown without warning had asked him, “Do you want Azadi [freedom]?” Mr. Mustafa who is said to have suffered fractures in both hands during the incident, told the TV channel that he felt vindicated.
Mr. Minhajauddin said that his fingers were fractured when he was hit by a lathi. When he tried to escape from the room, he was hit in the eye in which he lost his vision.
While the police were hitting people with lathis inside the research scholar’s section, more personnel were allegedly waiting outside the room. They allegedly hit people as they came out. “I started to feel unconscious and somehow made my way to the bathroom,” he said. Mobile footage from the day, showed Mr. Minhajauddin bleeding from his face, lying unconscious in the bathroom of the university along with another student.
“Jamia [Millia Islamia] could have released this footage themselves and made everything clear but they were also worried about the law and order situation,” he said, adding that there was enough evidence to establish police brutality and that action must be taken.
Mr. Minhajauddin is undergoing regular treatment at AIIMS to make sure his other eye does not get infected, he said. Various foundations had also reached out to him and were helping him raise funds for his treatment.
He said that he had been advised to go abroad to seek treatment as well but was yet to take a decision in the matter. He has also approached multiple authorities to have a case registered in the matter and has approached the High Court to seek compensation, he said.
A notice was issued to the authorities on February 11 in this regard, he added.
