AMN /
A large number of students, teachers and people from different walks of life Thursday took out a march here to protest the police action at JNU and demanded immediate release of the varsity’s students’ union president Kanhaiya Kumar, who is facing sedition charges.
Scenes of protest that rocked the Jawaharlal Nehru University were also seen in other cities including Bengaluru, Jaipur, Kolkata and Chennai joining in the demand for the release of student leader Kanhaiya Kumar arrested on sedition charges.
Holding placards bearing incisive messages and shouting slogans like “Long Live JNU”, the protesters marched from Mandi House to Jantar Mantar.
A huge number of them held roses in their hands and raised them in the air in unison at the start of the march and let out a huge defiant cry. Besides students, alumni and faculty of JNU and other universities such as DU, Jamia Milia Islamia and Ambedkar University Delhi, eminent academicians, journalists, theatre and film personalities also participated in the protest.
“And what has been done to Kanhaiya and the way police has been allowed to crack down on our university is completely unacceptable, and we will not take things lying down. We stand in solidarity with Kanhaiya, and demand his immediate release,” a JNU student said.
Alleging being subject to “witch-hunting “and “media trail”, the concurring voice among the protesters was to “save the JNU” from “right-wing forces imposing their ideologies” on a liberal institution.
Swaraj Abhiyan member Yogendra Yadav, denouncing the crackdown on the varsity campus, alleged that “the Centre wants to make an example of JNU to further their own right-wing agenda in the country.”
ABVP activists were in the thick of things in Patna, clashing with members of the All India Students Federation (AISF). Police said a group of Communist Party of India-affiliated AISF, along with the student wing of Bihar’s ruling Rashtriya Janata Dal, took out a march in support of Kumar. They had also raised slogans against the BJP outside the party office before police resorted to lathicharge to control the situation.
In Kolkata, police were on alert as two groups of students held rival rallies in the Jadavpur University campus. Students affiliated with ABVP demanded strict action against Kumar and others who they accused of being anti-Indian.
In Chennai, police arrested 40 students for participating in a similar movement.
Soon after the protests began, home minister Rajnath Singh tweeted that anyone shouting anti-India slogans “will not be tolerated or spared”. He further sought “cooperation from all political parties and people to join in the fight against anti-national forces”.