Police dragged away the mother of a Jawaharlal Nehru University student missing for 23 days and around 300 JNU students as they staged noisy protests here yesterday. The mother was later let off.
Policewomen physically lifted a weeping Fatima Nafees, who hails from Badaun in Uttar Pradesh, as policemen prevented other students from coming to her rescue near the India Gate monument in the city’s heart.
She was put into a Delhi police bus and driven away.
Minutes earlier, as police began breaking up the student protest citing prohibitory orders clamped in the area, Fatima - who had been camping on the JNU campus for weeks - turned emotive.
“Where is my child? I want my child,” she screamed when journalists approached her amid the gathering mayhem.
Both male and female students turned up for the protest but police blocked all roads leading to the World War I monument. Many students tried to slip through the police cordon about a kilometre away.
As the demonstration got under way, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal - who on Thursday had urged the JNU students to take their protest to the India Gate area - urged President Pranab Mukherjee, the JNU Visitor, to urge the central government to speed up efforts to trace Najeeb.
Najeeb went missing after a tiff on the night of October 14 with alleged members of the Bharatiya Janata Party-affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) on the campus. The ABVP has denied involvement in his disappearance.
“I request you to urgently intervene in the turn of events in JNU,” the Aam Aadmi Party leader said.
“Further, I also request you to immediately direct the central government to expedite the investigation process to find Najeeb.
“We are at a juncture where every single moment counts,” Kejriwal added.
One of the protesters, Shahid Raza, alleged that the police treated Fatima shoddily. All the detainees were taken to the Mandir Marg police station initially, police said.
“The police detained us on way to India Gate. They manhandled Najeeb’s mother,” Raza said.
Joint Commissioner of Police Dependra Pathak denied the charge. He said no one was “manhandled.”