Following the Delhi High Court’s decisions, the Delhi Police has been searching the campus of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) campus, 65 days after the disappearance of post graduate student, Najeeb Ahmad. The police, eager to police JNU has been combing all hostels, schools, the central library, the forests and other premises to find Najeeb or to get some clues that could lead them to his whereabouts.
This search was conducted using horses and sniffer dogs, leaving the JNU community in the hope that this will bring some positive results, but the manner and fashion of this search has raised serious questions too. Since the onslaught of the Modi government and his Ministry of Human Resources Development on free thought and dissent,epitomised in its attempts at authoritarian control of all university campuses in the country, the presence of police on the campus is unsavoury.
Students are asking
- Why the campus searches have been conducted so late, two months after the date of disappearance of Najeeb? Why did neither the court or police initiate a search in the initial days itself?
- Is the search in hostels an indication that the police still believes or even thinks that Najeeb is still hiding in JNU?! The probability is less than 1% indeed because it is not easy to hide a person within the campus for over two months. Any possible clue or evidence that could have helped them solve the mystery must have by now vanished.
- Could it be that the police thinks that Najeeb is being hidden by some students, say, the Left party people to get his perpetrators punished?
- Has the police assumed that he is being hidden by his assaulters?
- Is it that the police is trying to find if he is being hidden by some staff members, perhaps some teachers?
- Does the police think that he is killed and buried inside JNU, then did they try checking every nook and corner? Then how would a search after two months will enable them to find that out?
- On the other hand, the JNUSU has demanded that the search include the home of the controversial Vice Chancellow(VC) house also
- The VC is being criticized for Najeeb’s disappearance. Repeated conflicts with the administration have,in fact further slowed down the investigation and has also at times dissipated people's attention and participation.
Yes, a heartbroken mother can still be seen waiting there. We need an answer. If Najeeb is alive, he should be able to return to his normal life, meet his mother and family, and pursue his education.
BACKGROUND
On the morning of October 15, Najeeb Ahmed, a 27-year-old first-year postgraduate student of biotechnology at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, was spotted getting into an autorickshaw on the campus. He has not been seen since.
In this period, his case has been shifted to a special investigation team, formed on the orders of Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, from the crime branch of the Delhi Police. The reward for information on him has been increased from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 10 lakhs. The university authorities, fearing protests by students, have set up iron grills around the administration building. There have been numerous rumours about Ahmed being spotted in cities in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and even Nepal. None of these leads have worked out. Najeeb Ahmed is still missing.
“In the past two weeks, we received a lot of phone calls from people claiming to have spotted Najeeb,” said his brother, Mujeeb Ahmed. “Most of the callers later started asking for contact details of former JNU students’ union president Kanhaiya Kumar and former vice-president Shehla Rashid Shora, whom they have seen on TV. All such calls have so far turned out to be hoaxes.”
He added, “In the end, the last information about Najeeb is the one given by the crime branch, which claimed to have traced the autorickshaw that dropped him outside the Jamia Millia University campus on October 15.”
According to the police officer who headed the special investigation team, the number of calls from people claiming to have spotted Najeeb Ahmed rose with the increase in the reward money, from Rs 1 lakh in the beginning to Rs 2 lakhs, then Rs 5 lakhs and finally, Rs 10 lakhs. “Following such leads, we sent teams to several cities including Darbhanga, Bhopal, Bareilly, Aligarh, Ajmer and even Kathmandu,” the officer said.
Meanwhile, the Jawaharlal Nehru university Student Union (JNUSU)'s call for indefinite sir in, in late November which was followed by a crude and militaristic intervention by the RSS-inspired Vice Chancellor of this prestigious institution of higher learning. Freedom Sqaure, the locale for protests has been cordoned off.
Soon after JNUSU's call came, the space which used to be the spot for protest, inspiring speeches and meetings by students and teachers alike –a vacant space with powerful grafitti has been blocked with patrol vehicles.
Says a JNUSU press release, “This is the same space in Ad block where we used to sit during hunger strike or SIT-IN programs. First, blocking the space with vehicles, and now, installation of gates clearly indicate how the JNU VC has come down to even apply such cheap tactics to keep students away from raising voice. After having utterly failed to scare the student activists with notices, fines, disciplinary actions etc., the JNU VC is now trying to take away the spaces of protest. We want to reiterate, this university has a history of struggle and no gates can put a stop to this.” The statement was issued by Satarupa Chakraborty, General Secretary, JNUSU.
This move of the JNU VC came, after issuing circulars and reminders to the students of Jawaharlal Nehru University against carrying out protests, sit-ins and public events outside the Administration Block, the university on Sunday night “caged” the area traditionally used by the students to carry out protests.
Dubbed as “Freedom Square,” the students see the move to install iron grills as attack on their Freedom of Expression and a crackdown on dissenting voices.
The students have currently been using the space for an indefinite sit-in to demand justice for Najeeb Ahmed, the JNU student who has been missing for over 50 days now. Earlier this year, when some students of the university were charged with sedition, the others had camped there while on a hunger strike.
When the students refused to vacate the spot and refuted all moves by the university to block the sit-in space, the administration intentionally parked four cars on the both sides of the sit-in space and did not remove them even during the day, when they actually required them.
Late on Sunday night, while hundreds of students marched from Ganga Dhaba to the Administration Block against the token punishments to the ABVP members, the university had the protest site grilled within a couple of hours. The move came under severe criticism from students, with the former JNUSU vice-president tweeting: “JNU’s Freedom Square now equipped with a jail [sic].
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