A Violent Night

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JNU: ABVP Behind Brutal Well-Planned Attack On Students, Victims Say

The beds in Sabarmati hostel were littered with shattered glass from smashed windows, the doors to many rooms appeared to have taken a beating. Yet, so selective was the violence that the plastic flowers adorning the door of a former Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) activist were untouched, while a few doors down, a Kashmiri student’s room was forced open using a heavy fire extinguisher and ransacked.

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At 6:30 PM on January 5, a phalanx of at least 50 masked men, and a few women, armed with iron rods, wooden batons, crude hammers, and stones, swept through the Jawaharlal Nehru University campus violently attacking students and teachers. At least 20 students, including JNU Student Union President Aishe Ghosh, and a professor Sucharita Sen, sustained severe injuries and were hospitalised.

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As the rioters methodically attacked students and destroyed university property, mobs of stick-welding men assembled at the University’s gates, intimidated journalists, snatched their phones, and chanted slogans commonly associated with cadres of the ABVP, its parent organisation the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, and its affiliate — the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).