Author: Sharat Pradhan
in Lucknow
Publication: Rediff
on Net
Date: September 7, 2000
Students of the Aligarh
Muslim University went on the rampage and manhandled two officers of the
Intelligence Bureau in protest against what they termed the 'framing' of
two students as activists of the Kashmiri terrorist Hizbul Mujahideen and
the Students Islamic Movement of India.
Violence rocked the campus
as word spread about the arrest on Monday of Abdul Mobeen, a student of
Unani medicine at the university's Tibbiya College.
Mobeen was picked up
from the gates of his hostel. The other arrest, of Maroof Mohammed,
an AMU alumnus, was made in Agra. Both were said to have confessed
to their involvement in the recent bomb blasts in different parts of Uttar
Pradesh.
The angry students were
looking for IB sleuths whom they squarely blamed for the student's arrest.
Spotting a deputy superintendent of police and an inspector from the bureau
just outside Habib Hall, from where Mobeen was taken into custody on Monday,
the students mobbed them and dragged them inside the hostel where they
were mercilessly thrashed, Principal Secretary (Home) V K Mittal said.
It was only when the
vice-chancellor and other authorities of the university arrived on the
scene that the officers could be saved. They were later handed over
to the district authorities. But the district magistrate and senior
superintendent of police have not yet initiated any action against the
culprits.
Raising four demands,
including Mobeen's immediate release, the students have threatened further
violence.
Strongly defending SIMI
and denying that the organisation was hand-in-glove with the Hizb, they
are demanding a high-level inquiry into the antecedents of the arrested
students by a panel of four high court judges. The students have
also sought the closure of the university while the inquiry is on.
The AMU has about 16,000
students, of whom nearly 10,000 live in hostels spread all over the sprawling
campus, so it is practically impossible for the authorities to keep tabs
on the activities of all of them.
But the Special Task
Force sleuths who carried out Monday's arrests are confident about the
terrorist connections of Mobeen and Maroof. They were picked up in
connection with the series of blasts on Independence Day in Kanpur and
Lucknow as well as on the Sabarmati Express near Faizabad.
