Last night, 5th January 2020, was no less than a scary tale of violence, when a mob comprising almost 50 people, masked and armed, with rods and tools, barged into the JNU campus hostel and started attacking students and teachers.
Many were severely injured and admitted to AIIMS. Student Union President Aishe Ghosh and Professor Sucharita Sen are out of those who were beaten to blues and have sustained serious head injuries.
This appears to be a well-planned attack, which did not happen randomly overnight. Various pictures and videos of violent activities have been circulating online since yesterday. So what was this all about? A way of suppressing those who decide to speak up?
This kind of attack, on students inside a university campus, has not happened for the first time though. Similar treatment was received by the students of Jamia University a few weeks back, as a result of anti CAA protest. What can we expect from a country, where the students are subjected to this kind of treatment, and the people in the power refuse to pay heed? Or was this fuelled by some authority?
Initially, the victims and the Students’ Union suspected the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, (AVBP) – the student wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, (RSS) the ideological parent of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, but the followers denied the allegations.
The ABVP accused Left groups, including the Students Federation of India, the All India Students’ Association and the Democratic Students Federation of creating the trouble. However, a series of WhatsApp chats have surfaced, that suggest the mayhem was allegedly a planned operation by AVBP members to teach a “lesson to the Left”.
Let’s have a look at what exactly the chat messages reveal:
It all started at 5:39 PM on 5th January, when certain messages were exchanged on a WhatApp Group named ‘Friends of RSS’. Participants discussed various things that included asking all to join the group, by stating “Please join this group for unity against left terror. These people should be beaten up. That is the only treatment.”
One user responded: “Get the people from DU to enter from the Khajan Singh swimming side. We are 25-30 of us here.” As a Scroll report suggests, DU is likely to be a reference to Delhi University.
The report further claims that the number associated with this message was traced, using Truecaller, to an executive committee member of ABVP, and former vice president of ABVP at JNU.
Image Source: Scroll.in
The subsequent chat exchange showed how different activities, like gathering people from different sources and deciding which entrance to use at which time, were planned.
Then, at 7 PM, the messages in the same group read, “Saalo ko hostel mein ghush ke tode” (We entered their hostels and beat them up). This was met with the response, “Absolutely, it is time to settle things once and for all. If we don’t beat them up now, then when? ”
This looked to be perfect planning until a few non-ABVP and non-RSS people managed to enter the group through an invite link that went viral. This was retrieved as follows At 8.41 pm, in a WhatsApp group called “Unity Against Left”, someone messaged to ask: “Has the police come? Brother, leftists have joined this group too. Why was the link shared?”
As per data from Truecaller, this message allegedly came from state executive committee member of ABVP in Delhi and former vice president of ABVP at JNU in 2015-16, according to the user’s Facebook profile.
Source: Scroll.in
Reports claim, that the identity of the people exchanging messages about the violence, was traced via the screenshots of WhatsApp messages, Truecaller ( A Caller Identification App) and Facebook.
Once the Whatsapp users understood that new members were getting added, they deliberately circulated the group invite, so that more people could be added. According to political analyst, Shivam Shankar Singh, this was done in order to put the blame on the Left group and Muslim Students. All the right-wing group members exited once these new members were added.
This entire series of message exchange indicates a major conspiracy and needs to be dealt with strictly. This is highly condemnable behaviour, that must draw the attention of the governing bodies and strict action must be taken without wasting much time.