University College student Akhil Chandran told police investigators on Wednesday that Student Federation of India (SFI) leaders had stabbed him in the chest to make an example of him to students who dared to defy their diktats on the campus.
The police recorded his statement at Government Medical College Hospital here.
The undergraduate is recovering from a heart surgery to staunch internal bleeding from a near-fatal penknife thrust that ruptured a ventricle.
Doctors told the police that the emergency surgery had saved Akhil, and he had almost bled to death.
The attack has also cast a grim shadow on Akhil’s future as an amateur weightlifter. Akhil told the police that he had focussed on the sports to gain government employment.
It had also triggered spontaneous protest by University College students against the ‘tyranny’ of the SFI. The outfit has scrambled to make amends by inducting Akhil into the new SFI unit committee.
Verge of mutiny
Akhil told the police that scores of SFI activists in the college were on the verge of mutiny against the leadership owing to its attempts to stifle campus life.
The unit committee banned freshers from frequenting the canteen. It prohibited singing, fraternising in groups or pairs and enforced attendance at SFI marches and functions.
The SFI used the greenroom in the rear of the college stage as a torture chamber to discipline rebellious students.
Matters reached a head on July 12 when Akhil and his friends, most of them final year students, cocked a snook at the SFI men by singing in the open in front of their “office”.
Akhil alleged that unit secretary Nazeem had brushed away his plea for talks. The SFI unit secretary allegedly told Akhil that “we should settle this the hard way”.
Meanwhile, the six SFI leaders arrested for the attack on Akhil told a magistrate that they feared for their lives if the police took them to the campus to prepare the crime scene report. The magistrate declined their plea and handed them over to police custody.
