Pinjra Tod, an autonomous women’s collective, has written to Delhi Police Commissioner Amulya Patnaik alleging that police personnel have been going from “college to college and PG to PG” trying to identify Kashmiri women students over the past few days.
“The police personnel have cited ‘the students own protection’ as the reasons for the visits. However, the effect of the action has been quite contrary and has made people feel threatened and exposed in times when Kashmiri students are already facing public hostility from many corners. Such police visits have been made in hostels and colleges across Delhi University and even off campus residential areas around Jamia Millia Islamia,” the collective alleged in its letter.
It claimed that a police officer went to the warden of Miranda House College to collect the list of the names of Kashmiris, and their local and permanent residence.
The officials backed off when the students, with the help of the principal, intervened in the matter.
The activists said that another instance occurred in Jamia Nagar, where the police went to residential colonies enquiring whether women students and working professionals staying there were from Jammu and Kashmir. “It would be better if they issued warnings to RWAs, hostels indulging in harassment of Kashmiri people instead of surveilling them,” Pinjra Tod said.
Heavy polarisation
It said that this kind of identification and profiling of people in times of heavy polarisation has only rendered students more vulnerable.
“Rather than giving students a sense of ‘security’, this act only enables and facilitates recognition and fuels communal hostility against Kashmiri Muslims,” said the collective.
Pinjra Tod suggested that it would be more helpful if the police was more receptive and quick to act on instances of harassment being reported by Kashmiri students, by landlords, neighbours and others.
