Kerala police gear up to protect college ‘under siege’

By Ashraf Padanna/Thiruvananthapuram

The Kerala police yesterday formed a special team to protect the Mahatma Gandhi College in the city after a gang of right-wing activists ransacked classrooms and attacked teachers.

Houses of professors also came under attack, their cars smashed and threatened of dire consequences after the authorities restricted political activities on the campus of the college, a long-held fiefdom of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) where others are not permitted to enter.

The BJP and its “saffron” allies also held the state capital to ransom, enforcing a day-long shutdown, pelting public transport vehicles with stones and attacking media crew.

Normal life was hit by the district-wide shutdown.

The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the student outfit of the BJP, has announced an indefinite siege of the campus from today and will not allow student or staff to go into the campus.

“We have formed a special investigation team and the city police commissioner P Vijayan will head the SIT,” said Home Minister Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan who visited the campus yesterday morning.

“It is for the college authorities to decide when classes can be resumed. The police will provide protection needed to reopen the college,” the minister added.

The college properties, including science labs, were damaged as the ABVP activists and a masked gang supporting them went on a rampage and clashed with the police and hurled crude explosives inside the campus, targeting the offices and vehicles of teachers and staff.

The police have so far arrested eight students. The activists, the ABVP and its ideological mentor, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh,  has accused the principal of the college, run by the Nair Service Society, of sponsoring the violence.

They allege victimisation of the students by the principal.

The students left the college after the gang entered the classrooms and threatened them on Monday.

New students and their parents who arrived at the college to complete admission formalities also faced the brunt of the violence.

Yesterday a few students took the university exams under police protection.

The Kerala Women’s Commission has launched an enquiry into the alleged detention of a girl student for over seven hours in one of the rooms the ABVP activists frequently used for their activities.

The teachers told police they had found scores of wooden staffs and iron rods in the three rooms.

The principal had also reportedly objected to the activists collecting money from students in the name of the college management for a festival in the name of a religious seer. The event was never organised.

Following this, the management asked the principal not to allow anyone to use the college’s name for fundraising.

Student activists vandalised the notice board on which the decision was put up.

The college authorities then moved the High Court and procured an order securing police protection to rid the campus of political activities.

According to reports, the college council and its disciplinary committee also dismissed a few students, after serving them and their guardians notices on the ground that they had eroded the college’s peaceful atmosphere.

The dismissal of students led to a series of attacks on the council and committee members, including teachers, staff and security men. Bombs were hurled at the house of two teachers at night and their cars damaged. The principal and his family also received anonymous threats.

Sympathizers of other political parties were often hounded and terrorised and no other party is allowed to function on the campus of some 3,000 students. The activists are even said to have held impromptu trials and meted out corporal punishment to students who refused to attend their party programmes, local newspapers said.

The police have been deployed in strength on the college campus to prevent any further escalation of violence and to thwart any attempts at sabotage. They have extended protection to the houses of the principal and other senior staff members.

The NSS is holding a meeting today to form a people’s front, including local opinion makers, traders, and former students, to protect the institution from acts of vandalism. The police have registered cases of rioting, use of explosives and attack on uniformed men.