Early Times Report
Srinagar, Apr 9: Two years have passed since the clashes took place at National Institute of Technology Srinagar; the government is yet to fix the responsibility for using excessive force on students. In first week of April, 2016, non-Kashmiri students clashed with Kashmiri students at the NIT and the state police over a cricket match. This became a national issue and the NIT was shut for weeks.
Later, police also booked some NIT students under Sections 148 (rioting), 149 (unlawful assembly), 427 (mischief), 336 (endangering life of others) and 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) of the Ranbir Penal Code for the clashes between the local and outstation students.
Two years down the line, neither the charges on students have been dropped on the analogy of amnesty granted to notorious stone pelters in Kashmir.
"The Union HRD ministry had rejected the proposal of shifting the NIT Srinagar campus out of Kashmir," sources said. "We still don't know whether the charges against all students have been dropped or not. Government is completely silent on this issue. While there was a huge cry to grant amnesty to stone pelters," an NIT student said. A senior official of the NIT said many non-local students had written to the HRD ministry that the NIT Srinagar should be shifted outside the valley.
Sources said that there was a demand from students to take action against policemen who used excessive force on non-locals. "No action has been taken neither we know what happened to probe," sources said.
Following the incident, two companies of CRPF were deployed there and police was asked to remain out of the campus.
NIT was established as a Regional Engineering College in 1960, the majority of the students were from the Kashmir Valley. In 2003, REC, Srinagar, was converted into an NIT and with it the demography of the campus changed: of the estimated 3000 students enrolled, around 2500 are from outside the Valley. |
