Rights | SabrangIndia https://sabrangindia.in/category/rights/ News Related to Human Rights Wed, 09 Sep 2026 06:21:12 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.2.2 https://sabrangindia.in/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Favicon_0.png Rights | SabrangIndia https://sabrangindia.in/category/rights/ 32 32 Beaten to Death Outside His Own Home: What Delhi owes Chongtham Vikram Singh https://sabrangindia.in/beaten-to-death-outside-his-own-home-what-delhi-owes-chongtham-vikram-singh/ Wed, 09 Sep 2026 06:21:12 +0000 https://sabrangindia.in/?p=49216 The 55-year-old Manipuri musician died after a group allegedly attacked him in southeast Delhi; seven men and a juvenile have been apprehended

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]]> At around 11.30 p.m. on September 6, Chongtham Vikram Singh, a 55-year-old Manipuri musician and music teacher who had lived in Delhi for nearly two decades, went downstairs from his home in Kilokari, southeast Delhi. What followed was not a heated exchange that briefly got out of hand. According to the report of The Indian Express, Singh was allegedly assaulted by a group of men associated with a nearby dhaba after he objected to noise and commotion outside his home.

The violence did not end on the street. Singh was allegedly chased towards his third-floor residence and attacked again. His family heard him screaming. When his son opened the door, he reportedly found several men kicking and punching his father. Singh was eventually taken to hospital with severe injuries. He died the following morning.

 

 

The police have arrested seven adults and apprehended a juvenile. The FIR invokes Section 103(2) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita along with Section 3(5). Section 103(2) is particularly significant because it concerns group murder where specified identity-based grounds are alleged.

Singh was a Meitei from Manipur living in Delhi. Northeast community organisations have specifically demanded that the possibility of identity-based targeting be investigated. The North East Media Forum, while acknowledging that the motive remains under investigation, called for any possibility of racial or identity-based targeting to be thoroughly examined, pointing to continuing concerns over discrimination and intimidation faced by people from the Northeast.

According to The Hindu, Singh’s son told police that his father had mentioned being threatened by people associated with the nearby dhaba after earlier complaints about excessive noise. If established, that would make the incident considerably more serious than a spontaneous altercation: it would raise questions about a pattern of intimidation that preceded the fatal assault.

Arrests are not accountability

There is an uncomfortable history behind the reactions from Northeast communities. People from the Northeast living in Delhi have repeatedly spoken about racial stereotyping, slurs, discrimination and violence. That history is precisely why the killing of a Manipuri man inside the national capital cannot be understood only through the immediate trigger alleged by the police.

The Delhi Police have arrested the accused and the administration has promised lawful action. Union Minister Kiren Rijiju has said that a strong chargesheet will be filed within two weeks. The Indian Express reported that CCTV recordings captured the accused leaving the building after the assault and, around ten minutes later, Singh’s family carrying him towards hospital.

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge described the killing as a “chilling reminder” of what he called “utter lawlessness” under the BJP government. Congress leader and Leader of Opposition, Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi asked what Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s Ministry of Home Affairs and the Delhi Police were doing to stop what he described as growing lawlessness, particularly against people from the Northeast. Arvind Kejriwal also condemned the killing, while Manipur MP Bimol Akoijam demanded exemplary punishment.

 

The streets are already asking the question

People gathered outside Sunlight Colony Police Station demanding justice. A candlelight march was held. Northeast student and community organisations condemned the killing. These protests are not simply demands for punishment after a murder. They reflect a deeper anxiety: if a person can be attacked outside his own home after objecting to a disturbance, what protection does an ordinary Northeast resident actually have?

The North East Students’ Society at Delhi University and the North East Media Forum have both demanded a serious and impartial investigation. Their insistence that identity-based targeting be examined is important precisely because the burden of proving whether prejudice played a role lies with the investigation—not with the victim’s community.

 

Who was Chongtham Vikram Singh?

Chongtham Vikram Singh was a guitarist associated with Manipur’s early rock music movement, having performed with bands including Ultra Vires, Phoenix and Eastern Dark. He had spent years teaching music in Delhi and had built a life there. He was the son of celebrated Manipuri singer Chongtham Kamala, associated with Matamgi Manipur, widely regarded as the first Manipuri feature film. His cousin Lakshmipriya Devi directed Boong, the first Indian film to win a BAFTA. For nearly 17 years, Delhi was his home.

 

Related:

Days of Demands, Hours of Protest: Swatantra Bhardwaj finally detained in assault case

Pune’s DJ Controversy, Ganeshotsav and Assault: The politics of who gets to make noise

The Normalisation of Suicide at IITs: Institutional blindness and failure

Two women journalists allege police assault after questioning Delhi CM, say attack intensified after police heard they were Muslim

 

The post Beaten to Death Outside His Own Home: What Delhi owes Chongtham Vikram Singh appeared first on SabrangIndia.

]]> Satya Niketan Collapse: When students and neighbours had to rescue students from a system that had failed them https://sabrangindia.in/satya-niketan-collapse-when-students-and-neighbours-had-to-rescue-students-from-a-system-that-had-failed-them/ Wed, 09 Sep 2026 06:12:21 +0000 https://sabrangindia.in/?p=49206 From locals and NSUI volunteers digging through the rubble to AISA, SFI and others taking to the streets, the tragedy has exposed Delhi’s unsafe student-housing crisis and a State that acted after disaster struck

The post Satya Niketan Collapse: When students and neighbours had to rescue students from a system that had failed them appeared first on SabrangIndia.

]]> The collapse of the five-storey paying guest accommodation at Satya Niketan on September 6 has left seven people dead and several injured. But the tragedy cannot be reduced to the failure of one old building. What collapsed in Satya Niketan was a structure that reportedly housed students in a neighbourhood that has been transformed, over decades, into one of Delhi University’s principal student-housing hubs. It was a structure reportedly carrying floors beyond the permitted limit, being used as a private PG, and undergoing work in its basement. It was surrounded by other buildings whose safety is now also under scrutiny.

And when it came down, another fact became impossible to ignore: the people who were closest to the disaster became the first line of rescue, while the state institutions took 2 hours to provide “relief”. The accounts coming out through media outlets show residents, students and student volunteers scrambling over dangerous debris, pulling out bricks and concrete with their bare hands, arranging oxygen cylinders and water, clearing access routes and helping professional rescue teams locate survivors. That is not merely a story of community courage. It is also a deeply uncomfortable question about the State’s preparedness.

The first rescuers were the people who lived there

The most powerful images emerging from Satya Niketan are not of politicians arriving at the site. They are of ordinary people entering the rubble before they knew whether the adjoining structure might also collapse. As The Times of India reported, electrician Md Ishtiyaq and other local residents climbed onto the debris almost immediately after the building came down. There was fear that the neighbouring structure could collapse too. They went in anyway. Ishtiyaq borrowed a hammer from a nearby shop and used it to break a PVC pipe trapping a student’s leg. Around him, residents and students began improvising a rescue operation. Human chains were formed to move debris. Chunks of walls, concrete and iron rods were removed by hand.

The Indian Express reported that residents formed a human chain within minutes. Bricks, stone slabs, broken chairs, pillows and mattresses were pulled away so that trapped students could be located. Residents moved vehicles obstructing access and helped create space for rescue machinery. A former DU law student who lived in the building two years earlier told the newspaper that during the first hour, those who came forward to help were “mostly residents of the area”. The narrow lanes of Satya Niketan made the situation even more difficult. The very urban density that had made the locality attractive to students also made it difficult to bring heavy rescue equipment close to the collapsed structure. Yet the residents did what they could with what they had.

NSUI volunteers were not spectators — they were in the rubble

The role played by student volunteers deserves to be recorded with the same seriousness as the official rescue operation. The Times of India reported that DU students and NSUI volunteers Hariom Sisodiya and Pawan Thakur rushed to the site after receiving a call that a friend might have been inside the PG. They spent almost two hours removing bricks, pipes, rods, plaster and concrete. Their hands were scratched and bloodied from the debris. Their efforts, according to the report, helped rescue three people.

The The Hindu account records Krishna Bhardwaj, a DUSU campaigner, arriving with around 25–30 members of his team. He recalled pulling students from the rubble before police and fire personnel had fully taken over the rescue operation. He also described hearing a student pleading to be saved, only to later learn that the student had died.

The student volunteers did not know who was trapped beneath the rubble. They did not know whether the debris above them would shift. They went in because somebody had to.

 

The neighbourhood became a rescue infrastructure of its own

The community response did not end with pulling people out. According to The Times of India, local residents arranged water and refreshments for rescue workers through the night. A student volunteer, Gulaab, stayed at the site and helped control the crowd so that rescue personnel could work. By Monday, NSS cadres and students from nearby colleges arrived carrying biscuits, water, soft drinks and medical supplies.

ANI also reported something that is almost surreal in a city with an enormous disaster-response apparatus: local residents ordered oxygen cylinders through a quick-commerce application to assist people trapped under the debris. This is the kind of detail that should not be buried beneath official statements about “war footing”.

Because it raises a simple question: Why were ordinary residents having to improvise life-saving infrastructure at a disaster site?

There is, of course, an official account of the response. Police said a PCR call was received at approximately 1.34 pm and that Delhi Police, NDRF, Delhi Fire Service, DDMA and ambulances were deployed. NDRF officials have also said their teams reached the site soon after being alerted and began rescue operations. However, that official account exists alongside something that cannot simply be dismissed: repeated eyewitness accounts describing a slower response.

Times Now reported residents alleging that police and NDRF personnel were absent for nearly two hours. Another resident described the rescue operation as extremely slow. DU students Ankit Tiwari and Shivam Sharma said they helped residents remove debris and alleged that officials arrived more than an hour after the first call for help.

For some families, the rescue itself became another source of anguish

The story of Aditya makes the question of rescue time even more disturbing. According to the report carried by Rediff and PTI, Aditya had moved into the PG only four days before the collapse. After the building came down, he managed to call his family and tell them that he was trapped beneath the debris and that his phone battery was running out. He remained conscious and was able to communicate. His father later questioned why it took nearly four hours to bring him out.

Aditya survived and is being treated at AIIMS. However, while waiting, he recorded a video from beneath the debris. The footage showed the claustrophobic space in which he and another injured student were trapped. His father’s question is devastating precisely because it is so simple: if a conscious student could call for help, why did it take so long to reach him?

But the collapse did not begin on September 6

The most dangerous way to understand Satya Niketan would be to treat the collapse as an unpredictable accident. The reports collected in the file point to warning signs that existed well before Sunday afternoon. An MCD official told the media that the collapsed structure was a G+4 building on a roughly 55-square-yard plot where permission existed only for a G+1 structure. It was nevertheless being used as a student PG.

The adjoining girls’ PG was subsequently evac­uated and sealed after being found to be in a dilapidated condition. That immediately raises the question that cannot be avoided: If a building was allegedly four floors beyond what was permitted, how did it continue operating as a student accommodation in one of Delhi’s most prominent university neighbourhoods?

The responsibility cannot automatically stop with the property owner. The owner may face criminal liability if the investigation establishes wrongdoing. However, an unauthorised or unsafe building does not become invisible simply because a private person owns it. A building does not exist outside the reach of regulation. It requires approvals, must comply with prescribed building norms, and remains subject to inspection and enforcement by the authorities. Where a building is being used to accommodate dozens of students, safety standards become even more critical.

That makes the question of responsibility far bigger than simply asking who constructed the unauthorised floors. The real questions are: Who was responsible for monitoring the building? Who was supposed to inspect it? Were inspections actually carried out? If violations were visible, why was no timely action taken? Were notices issued, and if so, what happened afterwards? Why was the building not sealed or its use stopped? Most importantly, how was it allowed to remain occupied despite the risks?

The collapse, therefore, cannot be reduced to an act of unauthorised construction alone. It also demands scrutiny of the regulatory and enforcement machinery that was supposed to prevent precisely such a disaster.

Repair or construction work in the basement is another major line of investigation. Police said repair work was underway when the collapse occurred. Residents also reported basement work and water accumulation. The Chief Minister said preliminary information indicated that excavation in the basement may have caused a pillar to shift. MCD, however, has said the precise nature of the work cannot be established until the debris is cleared.

Residents told Times Now that they had warned the owners and workers about the condition of the building and the basement work. This is how preventable disasters happen: not necessarily because nobody saw the danger, but because danger becomes normalised.

Satya Niketan was built into a student-housing crisis

There is another uncomfortable truth here. Students did not simply choose Satya Niketan because private PGs were attractive. They went there because they needed somewhere to live. The Indian Express reported that Delhi University has more than 2.5 lakh students but only around 9,000 hostel beds, with hostel accommodation disproportionately available to postgraduate students. The result is that thousands of students, particularly those coming from outside Delhi, are pushed into private PGs and rental accommodation in neighbourhoods such as Satya Niketan and Mukherjee Nagar.

The question is not simply why students rented an unsafe building. The question is why a university that draws students from across the country does not have enough safe accommodation for them. The Delhi High Court put the issue far more directly.

As reported by The Telegraph, the Court questioned not only the role of the building owner and MCD but also the absence of adequate hostel facilities for outstation students. It directed the MCD to examine whether PG buildings had valid permissions and whether building laws had been violated, and asked DU to provide details of its outstation students and hostel capacity. The Court’s message was blunt: the government cannot escape responsibility.

The administrative response has now begun to look familiar. The MCD’s own pre-monsoon survey is now under scrutiny. According to The Hindu, the civic body had surveyed nearly 28 lakh of around 32.5 lakh properties identified for inspection by late June, but classified only 19 as dangerous and 74 as requiring immediate repairs. It remains unclear whether the Satya Niketan building had been inspected during that exercise.

What makes Satya Niketan different is the student unity emerging from the rubble

By Monday, September 7, the collapse had become the centre of a much larger student mobilisation across Delhi. AISA, SFI, NSUI and ABVP — organisations that occupy very different political and ideological spaces — took to the streets separately, but with strikingly overlapping demands: accountability for the deaths, safety audits of student accommodation, action against illegal construction and, above all, an end to the dependence on unsafe private PGs because universities have failed to provide enough hostels. The Telegraph, reporting on the protests, described the mobilisation as a response to both the deaths and the wider shortage of safe and affordable student housing.

AISA calls it an “avoidable disaster”: The All India Students’ Association has been among the most forceful in connecting the collapse to the larger failure of student infrastructure. AISA described the incident as an “avoidable disaster” and demanded strict action against those responsible as well as accountability from the Delhi government. Crucially, it also challenged the narrative that this was simply the consequence of one negligent property owner.

AISA pointed to the shortage of affordable hostels at Delhi University and argued that students are effectively pushed into expensive private PGs and rental accommodation because the university has failed to provide alternatives. It also alleged that police and JCB machinery reached the site around two hours late — a claim that must be independently investigated against official response records, but which has now become a significant part of the protest narrative. Instead of asking only, “Who owned this building?”, AISA is asking why students had to live in such buildings in the first place.

SFI has taken the housing question directly to the streets: The Students’ Federation of India has similarly refused to treat Satya Niketan as an isolated accident. The SFI Delhi State Committee held a protest rally and candlelight vigil at Delhi University’s Arts Faculty, demanding hostels for all students, immediate safety audits of PGs and private accommodation, closure of unsafe buildings and a cap on rents in student residential areas.

Its demand goes even further: until adequate hostel infrastructure is created, the government should bear students’ accommodation costs. Students interviewed after the collapse told the media that they were paying between ₹12,000 and ₹15,000 for cramped double-sharing rooms, precisely because many colleges do not provide hostels. Another DU student told The Indian Express that the university has more than 2.5 lakh students but only around 9,000 hostel beds. So when SFI demands a rent cap and state-funded accommodation until hostels are available, it is responding to a material reality students are already living.

 

NSUI is demanding hostels, inspections and closure of illegal PGs: NSUI has also taken the fight directly to the government and DU administration. NSUI president Vinod Jakhar alleged that no new hostel had been built for DU in the past decade, arguing that the shortage has forced students into private PGs where, in his words, safety guidelines are not followed.

The organisation has demanded new hostels within DU, inspections of all PG accommodations and the closure of illegally operated facilities. It has also called for regulation of rents in PGs and hostels. That demand exposes an obvious contradiction. The State cannot simultaneously fail to provide enough university accommodation, allow private housing to fill the vacuum, and then treat every unsafe PG as merely a private dispute between landlord and tenant.

 

Cockroach Janta Party demands range from student safety to a wider indictment of the State: The response from the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) has also sought to place the Satya Niketan collapse within a much larger crisis of student safety and public infrastructure. CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke questioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the contradiction between political attention to universities and the condition in which students are actually being made to live. Referring to Modi’s visit to Delhi University shortly before the collapse, Dipke asked how students could be expected to pursue their education when even their hostels and classrooms could not be guaranteed to be safe. He demanded safe classrooms, functional hostels and basic dignity for students, asking pointedly how long students would be made to pay for failures in public infrastructure.

The CJP’s later response went beyond the immediate building and towards the system that allows unsafe student accommodation to proliferate. Its spokesperson Saurav Das described students as being left to “live like cockroaches” and alleged the existence of a wider “PG mafia” involving unregulated paying guest accommodation and political interests. These are allegations, not established findings, but they point to precisely the questions that any serious investigation must answer: who owns these properties, who authorises or tolerates their conversion into student housing, whether inspections actually take place, what happens to violations once they are detected, and whether officials are held accountable when unsafe structures continue to operate. The CJP has demanded a seven-point action plan including structural audits of student accommodations, disclosure of building records, a public database of safety certificates, accountability of officials and compensation of ₹1 crore to each bereaved family.

 

Dipke also framed the tragedy as a question of political priorities. As reported by The Hindu, he contrasted the construction of grand political establishments with the unsafe and inadequate infrastructure available to students, arguing that the government should prioritise safe educational institutions and hostels rather than political grandstanding.

 

ABVP is demanding officials answer for the collapse: ABVP, meanwhile, has taken its protest directly to the civic administration. The organisation held demonstrations and sit-ins across DU campuses and demanded accountability from the MCD, including the suspension/resignation of the MCD Commissioner. It has called for a high-level and impartial inquiry, action against negligent PG operators and building owners, action against officials responsible for enforcement failures, and immediate structural and safety audits of private accommodation in student-dominated areas.

ABVP’s protest also escalated at the MCD headquarters, where protesters entered the Civic Centre and the premises were subsequently reported to have been vandalised. That escalation should be recorded honestly; a legitimate demand for accountability does not make vandalism acceptable. At the same time, the underlying question raised by the protest remains entirely legitimate: how was an allegedly unauthorised G+4 building permitted to operate as a student PG?

The Opposition response: From condolences to the question of accountability

Opposition parties have increasingly moved beyond expressions of grief to attack what they describe as a systemic failure of governance. Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge called the collapse a “deeply distressing and avoidable tragedy”, arguing that students come to Delhi to build their futures, not to risk their lives merely to find a roof over their heads. Senior Congress leader and Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi similarly connected the deaths to the chronic shortage of university hostels, pointing out that students are pushed into private PGs where large numbers can end up living under one roof in what he described as inhumane conditions. He also said Congress and NSUI workers were present at the site and ready to assist affected students and their families.

 

Rahul Gandhi’s response became sharper the following day. He accused the BJP government of following a recurring pattern in which there is little prevention before disasters, followed by political grandstanding and the shifting of responsibility onto lower-level officials after lives have already been lost. Referring to the Satya Niketan collapse alongside other recent disasters in Delhi, Gandhi argued that the absence of preventive action was itself a form of political failure. He also questioned the notion of a “triple-engine” government in Delhi, asking why such administrative alignment had not translated into basic safety for students. NDTV reported his central argument as one of “no accountability”, with Gandhi saying that where there is no political intent, there is no accountability either.

 

The criticism also came from within the wider Congress organisation. Delhi Congress chief Devendra Yadav asked why students arriving in the capital from across the country should have to live without any guarantee of safety, arguing that a Prime Minister’s speeches at Delhi University could not substitute for actual protection of students. Congress media department head Pawan Khera described the recovery of a copy of A Thousand Splendid Suns from the rubble as a symbol of a generation that, in his words, was being left without adequate guarantees of dignity, safety or a future. NSUI president Vinod Jakhar separately alleged that the administration arrived nearly two hours after the collapse and said NSUI workers had immediately attempted to pull students from the debris.

 

The Aam Aadmi Party, meanwhile, placed the responsibility more directly on the Delhi civic and administrative machinery. AAP national convenor Arvind Kejriwal described the collapse as “extremely tragic and alarming” and said the government needed to “wake up from its slumber”, calling for comprehensive measures to protect public safety. AAP MP Atishi demanded a high-level inquiry and strict action against those responsible for negligence. Saurabh Bharadwaj went further, questioning the functioning of the MCD building department and alleging that corruption and political influence had allowed unsafe construction to continue. Those allegations should themselves be investigated rather than treated as established fact, but they underline the central issue: the collapse was not simply the consequence of one building owner’s decisions; it raises questions about the regulatory machinery that was supposed to identify dangerous construction before people were killed.

 

The protest has moved from grief to a demand for structural change

The students’ demands are also increasingly being translated into formal legal and institutional action. A PIL filed by DU law student Aniket Kumar Gupta has sought an independent investigation into the collapse, an immediate safety audit of private PGs and hostels in Satya Niketan, safe relocation of students from unsafe buildings and ₹1 crore compensation for each deceased victim, reported Indian Express.

NSUI has separately moved the Delhi High Court seeking a structured hostel-development policy for Delhi University. Moreover, the wider student mobilisation is happening against the backdrop of the Delhi High Court itself questioning the regulation of PGs and the adequacy of hostel facilities.

The Court has asked how buildings with permissions for limited floors are being turned into much larger PG structures and why there is no effective mechanism regulating such accommodation.

The significance of Satya Niketan is already travelling beyond the immediate site. The Times of India reported that students at Sir Chotu Ram Institute of Engineering and Technology in Meerut protested outside the vice-chancellor’s office over hostel shortages in the aftermath of the Delhi tragedy. The students were demanding accommodation and expressing heightened fears about being forced into private housing after seeing what happened in Satya Niketan, reported The Times of India.

Conclusion: The students should not have had to become their own rescue system

The most disturbing lesson of Satya Niketan is not simply that an allegedly unauthorised and structurally compromised building collapsed. It is that, in the crucial first moments after it did, ordinary residents and students were among those who climbed into the rubble, organised human chains, moved debris and searched for survivors. The government’s response cannot end with suspensions, sealing drives and post-disaster audits. Those measures may be necessary, but they are the beginning of accountability, not its conclusion. Authorities must establish who approved what, what the building was legally permitted to contain, whether it was ever inspected, whether violations were detected, whether notices were issued, whether enforcement was attempted, and why a property being used to house students was allowed to remain in operation. The precise cause of the collapse must also be established independently rather than prematurely attributed to basement work, rain, seepage or any other single factor while the investigation is still underway.

Most importantly, the State cannot simultaneously fail to provide adequate student housing and then treat the safety of the private housing market as someone else’s problem. When public universities provide only a fraction of the accommodation their students require, students are pushed into dense private neighbourhoods such as Satya Niketan. When those neighbourhoods become commercially dependent on student housing without corresponding infrastructure, regulation and enforcement, the resulting risk is not merely a “private” landlord problem. It becomes a question of urban governance and public responsibility. The collapse has therefore exposed more than one unsafe building. It has exposed a system in which students are expected to find their own roofs, residents are expected to improvise rescue operations, and governments arrive with audits after the deaths have already occurred.

 

Related:

Days of Demands, Hours of Protest: Swatantra Bhardwaj finally detained in assault case

The Normalisation of Suicide at IITs: Institutional blindness and failure

Pune’s DJ Controversy, Ganeshotsav and Assault: The politics of who gets to make noise

Midnight Arrest, Daylight Questions: Why was Santosh Pandit taken into custody?

The post Satya Niketan Collapse: When students and neighbours had to rescue students from a system that had failed them appeared first on SabrangIndia.

]]> Declared ‘Foreigner’, denied a hearing, pushed across the border: Gauhati HC pulls up Assam https://sabrangindia.in/declared-foreigner-denied-a-hearing-pushed-across-the-border-gauhati-hc-pulls-up-assam/ Tue, 08 Sep 2026 06:29:35 +0000 https://sabrangindia.in/?p=49202 Court finds “malice in law” holds State machinery acted “in tandem” to defeat Mumtaz Begum’s right to judicial review, and orders ₹2 lakh compensation

The post Declared ‘Foreigner’, denied a hearing, pushed across the border: Gauhati HC pulls up Assam appeared first on SabrangIndia.

]]> The Gauhati High Court has delivered an unusually sharp rebuke to Assam’s citizenship-determination machinery after a Bengali-origin Muslim woman, Mumtaz Begum, was arrested from the premises of a Foreigners Tribunal and subsequently expelled to Bangladesh without being given a meaningful opportunity to challenge the order declaring her a foreigner.

In an important first, the court has directed the Assam government to pay Begum interim compensation of ₹2 lakh. More significantly, however, the judgment raises disturbing questions about the manner in which the Foreigners Tribunal, police and State authorities operated in her case—and whether the machinery of citizenship determination was used to prevent judicial scrutiny rather than facilitate it.

As per the Scroll report, the Gauhati High Court bench of Justice Kalyan Rai Surana and Justice Susmita Phukan Khaund found that the conduct of the Nagaon Foreigners Tribunal displayed an apparent “malice in law”. The court went further, holding that the State machinery had acted “in tandem” to prevent Begum from exercising her right to approach the High Court against the tribunal’s order.

The case therefore goes beyond an individual error by a tribunal. It exposes what can happen when the determination of citizenship, detention and expulsion operate in close succession, leaving the person concerned with little or no practical opportunity to seek judicial protection.

A case that should never have reached deportation

Begum’s ordeal began decades before her eventual expulsion. As reported by Scroll, she was marked as a ‘D’ or doubtful voter in 1997, following a revision of electoral rolls in Assam. According to Scroll, around three lakh voters were disenfranchised during that process, with many subsequently referred by the border police to Foreigners Tribunals. Begum’s citizenship case then moved through the familiar and often exhausting cycle of tribunal proceedings and judicial challenges.

In 2017, the Nagaon Foreigners Tribunal ruled against her. She challenged that decision before the Gauhati High Court, which ordered a retrial. She returned to the tribunal, where she was again declared a foreigner. Begum challenged the decision once more in 2019. This time, the High Court found that the tribunal had failed to properly consider the evidence she had produced and directed it to reconsider the matter.

That direction should have meant another opportunity for the tribunal to examine the evidence and reach a fresh decision in accordance with law. Instead, the proceedings took a deeply troubling turn.

Arrested when she appeared to defend her case

On May 30, Begum appeared before the Nagaon Foreigners Tribunal pursuant to the High Court’s directions. According to the account reported by Scroll, rather than receiving a substantive reconsideration of her case, she was declared a foreigner and arrested within minutes of appearing before the tribunal. Her lawyers alleged that she was not even supplied a copy of the order—an omission that had obvious consequences because without knowing the contents of the order, challenging it became practically impossible. The High Court subsequently scrutinised the sequence of events surrounding her arrest.

Begum’s family said she appeared before the tribunal at around 12.30 pm and was arrested roughly half an hour later. As Scroll reported, the tribunal judge disputed this account. The Nagaon Superintendent of Police also told the court that the border police had arrested her near the tribunal premises at around 2 pm. But the High Court was not persuaded by the competing explanations.

The court reasoned that if Begum had actually been informed, even orally, that she had been declared a foreigner, there would have been little reason for her to remain around the tribunal premises during the period in which the police were able to take her into custody. That observation goes to the heart of the case.

The question was not simply whether Begum had been declared a foreigner. It was whether the process had been deliberately structured in such a way that she could be removed before she could challenge that declaration.

The right to appeal cannot be defeated by detention

The High Court’s most serious finding concerns precisely this issue. According to the court, the tribunal judge had “deliberately and wilfully delayed” issuing the order in a manner that enabled Begum to be arrested, moved to the Matia detention centre and subsequently expelled from India. The court concluded that the State machinery had thereby prevented her from exhausting her legal remedies and from approaching the High Court through a writ petition.

This is crucial. A tribunal’s declaration that a person is a foreigner does not, by itself, erase the constitutional right to challenge the decision. A legal system cannot meaningfully provide a remedy if the person concerned be removed from the country before she can access that remedy. The problem becomes particularly stark in citizenship cases, where the consequences of an adverse order can include detention, separation from family and eventual expulsion. The right to judicial review cannot become merely theoretical.

The tribunal’s conduct under scrutiny

The court did not confine its criticism to the consequences of the tribunal’s order. It questioned the circumstances in which the order itself came into existence. The High Court directed Assam’s Home and Political Department to investigate the date and time on which the tribunal member had prepared the opinion, Scroll reported. If necessary, the authorities were even directed to seize the tribunal member’s computer to establish when the order had been prepared.

The High Court also criticised the tribunal judge, Bipul Kumar Nath, saying that he appeared to have developed a personal grudge because the matter had earlier been remanded to him for fresh consideration. The issue, therefore, was not simply procedural irregularity. The court was examining whether the process had been manipulated to produce a particular outcome—and to ensure that outcome could not be challenged in time.

Expulsion before legal remedies were exhausted

The court also pointed to the safeguards governing expulsion. As reported by Scroll, the High Court found that Begum was denied an opportunity to challenge the May 30 order, which it described as a direct violation of the applicable standard operating procedure under the Immigrants (Expulsion from Assam) Act, 1950. The procedure requires legal remedies available to a person to be exhausted before expulsion. That safeguard is not a technicality.

Expulsion is an irreversible act with potentially devastating consequences. Once a person is pushed across an international border, access to Indian courts, lawyers, documents and family becomes infinitely more difficult. In Begum’s case, that is precisely what appears to have happened. Her family discovered that she had been expelled only after approaching the Gauhati High Court with a habeas corpus petition. The court subsequently involved the Ministry of External Affairs and indicated that efforts should be made to locate Begum in Bangladesh and bring her back to India.

Article 21 does not stop at citizenship

One of the most important aspects of the judgment is the High Court’s invocation of Article 21 of the Constitution. The court reiterated that the protection of life and personal liberty extends not only to Indian citizens but also to non-citizens. In other words, even a person whom the State treats as a foreign national does not become a person without constitutional protection. This principle is particularly significant in Assam, where citizenship status has become deeply intertwined with detention, deportation and political debates about migration.

The constitutional question cannot simply be reduced to whether a person has successfully established citizenship. Even where the State claims that an individual is a foreign national, the State must still act according to law. It cannot imprison a person without due process, suppress an available remedy, conceal an order from the person affected, or remove her from the country before she has had a genuine opportunity to challenge the decision.

₹2 lakh is compensation—but the judgment is about much more

The ₹2 lakh compensation ordered by the High Court should not obscure the larger significance of the case as the Gauhati High Court has also attempted to ensure that what happened to Begum is not repeated. It directed the Superintendent of Police in every district of Assam to ensure that a person declared a foreign national is informed of the tribunal’s judgment before being taken into custody. It further directed that an adult member of the person’s family should be informed before the detainee is moved outside the jurisdiction of the district police.

These directions are significant because they recognise a basic principle of procedural fairness: a person must know what has been decided against them before the State takes away their liberty.

Family notification is equally important. In citizenship and detention cases, the disappearance of a family member can leave relatives with no information about where the person has been taken or whether they remain in the country.

The High Court has effectively drawn a line: a declaration of foreigner status does not authorise the State to bypass due process. The State cannot convert a tribunal order into an immediate mechanism of disappearance. It cannot use detention to defeat the right of appeal. And it cannot treat the absence of citizenship status as the absence of constitutional rights.

 

Related:

From Statelessness to Citizenship: CJP helps Adori Bibi reclaim her Indian identity

Nationality Before Deportation: The Rajubala Das case

Aadhaar, Voter ID and PAN Cannot Prove Citizenship: Calcutta High Court’s Foreigners Order and the burden of belonging

Another CJP Victory: Barpeta Tribunal declares Alam Khan ‘not a foreigner’

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]]> ‘Gauri Day’ Became ‘Gen Z Day’ https://sabrangindia.in/gauri-day-became-gen-z-day/ Tue, 08 Sep 2026 05:25:24 +0000 https://sabrangindia.in/?p=49198 When a memorial for the slain journalist Gauri Lankesh became a loud and renewed reiteration for more accountability, equality and justice in India

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]]>

Bengaluru: Kavitha (Lankesh) and I often wonder if our September 5 “Gauri Day” memorials, defiant and thought-filled ruminations in public spaces at different locales in Bengaluru have become only a ritual. Held in and around the karmabhoomi and janmabhoomi of Gauri Lankesh, faithfully conceived and put together by the band of activists, writers and leaders of people’s movements who worked with and deeply loved Gauri, each year it is the evening itself filled with rejuvenation and warmth that provides the answer.

These are not events of ritualising but defiant reminders of what we all are individually and in the collective. And a speaking out on what her life, and the giving and taking of it, brutally by the perpetrators continues to mean.

Gauri Lankesh, woman, political activist, journalist, daughter, sister, and a soul-sister to me, was shot dead by assassins owing allegiance to the Sanatan Sanstha, a rabid far-right supremacist group, on the night of September 5, 2017, when she was just 55. The outpouring of rage and collective grief and condemnation transcended region, language and borders as her own brand of effervescent charm and bold activism demanded. Despite hate mongers high in the chain of political patronage gloating at her martyrdom, Gauri soared above this grime and shone with those sparkling eyes and mischievous smile.

The months before her killing saw an uprising that became the first gritty challenge to the RSS-BJP’s proto-fascist regime. Rohith Vemula’s death (institutional murder) occasioned by a crude withdrawal of a scholarship grant by a central university (Hyderabad Central University) to a bright Dalit student, the humiliation and exclusion from hostel and library, the iconic Velli Vada that students set up. Then came the concerted attack on students and faculty of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Delhi University (DU), Film & Television Institute of India (FTII) and several others. Educational autonomy, academic rigour and ideological challenge were being throttled, the University campus policed and weaponised. Public education and democratic entitlements hard fought for were being withdrawn and it was the students who were fearlessly speaking out.

A discussion at the 'Gauri Day' memorial for journalist Gauri Lankesh, commemorated as 'Gen Z Day' on September 5, 2026, in Bengaluru. Photo: Teesta Setalvad

A discussion at the ‘Gauri Day’ memorial for journalist Gauri Lankesh, commemorated as ‘Gen Z Day’ on September 5, 2026, in Bengaluru. Photo: Teesta Setalvad

Rohith Vemula. Umar Khalid, Kanhaiya Kumar, Jignesh Mevani and so many others had raised their voices. Attending solidarity meetings for their struggle, as many of us did back then, Gauri Lankesh had declared these young men as “my (her) children.” And it was these fiery young leaders who were the pallbearers at the first such memorial remembrance at Bengaluru’s town hall, on that first anniversary of our collective loss. Jignesh Mevani, one such youth leader from Gujarat, was also physically present at her burial at the Lingayat community’s Chamrajpet burial grounds on September 6, 2017, as was as utterly broken Indira amma, her mother who left us this June (2026); along with Kavitha, her beloved sister; Esha, the daughter of her heart (just 13); and Prakash Raj, friend and more to the entire P. Lankesh family.

This past September 6 (2026), however, it was the Gen Z of the Jantar Mantar July protest, who held the audience at the St Joseph’s Auditorium, spellbound. Aishe Ghosh, a post graduate student and student leader with Students Federation of India (SFI); Danish Ali, another post graduate student at JNU from All India Students Association (AISA) and presently joint secretary, JNUSU; Ashutosh Ranka, co-spokesperson of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP); and Karnataka student leaders, all vibrant speakers, including Sangeetha, the Bengaluru district convenor (AISF); Sharanya, leader (AISA); Arpitha Gracy, Bengaluru district president (SFI); Mahantesh, office secretary (AIDSO); Durgesh, state secretary (KVS), Md. Peer, state secretary (SIO); and Anil Kumar of the KRRS youth wing. The event was notable for a dominant presence of young women.

V.S. Sreedhara, a professor and Deepu, a filmmaker, are among the trustees of the GMT who spearheaded this year’s event.

Each speaker matched the previous one in their clarity of assertion and eloquence. If Aishe Ghosh spoke of the climate of repression in the public sphere and emphasised the need to speak up, Danish Ali declared that the younger generation was in a consistent political struggle with the present regime at the centre and this battle would continue till they reclaimed India.

“We (the youth) are not friends of the people who are responsible for killing people like Gauri Lankesh!” Ali asserted in a politically intuitive statement recalling the octopus-like network of hate that had celebrated this assassination.

Ghosh, who has herself faced brute violence at the hands of a masked mob (later allegedly traced to the RSS-affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, ABVP) in January 2020, also reminded us that Danish Ali and many other student leader’s remained “rusticated” by JNU today and that despite this, their staunch commitment continues.

JNUSU joint secretary Danish Ali, president Aditi Mishra, vice president Gopika K. Babu, general secretary Sunil Yadav, and former President Nitish Kumar were rusticated for two semesters. Both the official students union, JNUSU and AISA have condemned this action by the administration that they alleged has to do with effective protests by the student bodies against the discriminatory UGC Promotion of Equality Regulations.

A discussion at the 'Gauri Day' memorial for journalist Gauri Lankesh, commemorated as 'Gen Z Day' on September 5, 2026, in Bengaluru. Photo: Teesta Setalvad

Aishe Ghosh and Danish Ali among others on the stage at ‘Gauri Day’ memorial for journalist Gauri Lankesh, commemorated as ‘Gen Z Day’ on September 5, 2026, in Bengaluru. Photo: Teesta Setalvad

A young and visible women youth leadership with a fearless and refreshing youthful adherence to constitutional values defined this year’s Gauri Day, commemorated as ‘Gen Z Day’ by the Gauri Memorial Trust.

Ranka irrepressibly declared that, “if Gauri Lankesh were with us she would have proudly declared herself a Cockroach!” The CJP co-convener held the audience in his grip as he recalled the heady days at the Jantar Mantar protest, the camaraderie between Left student groups and the newly emergent CJP, as well as the heated arguments within. Ranka said it was the inimitable recourse to political satire and humour in new forms, as Gen Z’s weapon of choice, that left the establishment totally bewildered.

In an address that was both self-effacing and engaging (he acknowledged the political mastery of the previous two speakers, Aishe and Danish), Ranka appealed for a constructive minimum point programme that was ready to put aside ideological determination and demand, at least accountability and access  in public education. Criticising the devious handover of schools to the ‘Ambanis and Adanis’, pledging his support to the little red book, the Indian Constitution, and ending his address with slogans “Jai Samvidhan”, “Jai Bhim” and ” Inquilab Zindabad”, Ranka lent his indirect allegiance to the battle cries for distributive and representative justice while retaining his own identity. He also said that three factors helped the movement grow: a minimum common agenda, focus on what protesters were fighting for, and collective demand for institutional accountability.

Ghosh said that young people entering educational institutions after 2014 had been increasingly silenced, especially on issues involving marginalised and minority communities. “Gauri was martyred simply for speaking her mind. Today, if you stand up for marginalised communities or question state-approved viewpoints in universities, you are targeted,” she said. Pointing to a systemic failure from paper leaks to slashed mid-day meal budgets, she argued that recent student uprisings are a direct refusal to stay quiet under the guise of neutrality.

Ali said that the younger generation was in a continuing political struggle with the present BJP government and this would continue until they could reclaim democratic India. She also recalled that she was a school student when Gauri Lankesh was murdered in 2017, and how the killing made her understand the cost of speaking against the growing Hindutva extremism in the county. Gauri’s killing should be remembered alongside other instances of violence and repression involving people who challenged the same brand of ideological forces. The martyrdom of rationalists Narayan Dabholkar (August 2013), Govind Pansare (February 2015), M.M. Kalburgi (August 2015) preceded the murder of Gauri Lankesh in cold blood. The national and international outcry as also the immediate police actions and arrests to some extent arrested that brand of killing and the violence though the trial still continues.

A discussion at the 'Gauri Day' memorial for journalist Gauri Lankesh, commemorated as 'Gen Z Day' on September 5, 2026, in Bengaluru. Photo: Teesta Setalvad

A discussion at the ‘Gauri Day’ memorial for journalist Gauri Lankesh, commemorated as ‘Gen Z Day’ on September 5, 2026, in Bengaluru. Photo: Teesta Setalvad

While much focus at last evening’s event was initially on the three speakers who have held national attention, the Gauri Memorial Trust retained its staunch commitment to the local and regional by also inviting seven leaders of local state wide student and youth movements, many of whom spoke in Kannada and also highlighted with fiery specific details how the local state government headed (since May 2023) by the Indian National Congress was also pursuing a deviant education policy of shutting down state-run public schools in their thousands and attempting handovers to private ownership. It was only the sustained bottoms up struggles by youth and student socio-political groups that have formed district level committees to resist this shut down and take-over bid that have averted the crisis somewhat, speakers elaborated with details. Each also spoke of the deep impact Gauri Lankesh had on them as individuals and the vision they held today.

It was the concluding short evocative remarks of Esha Lankesh, Gauri’s niece, that quietly concluded the evening before some rigorous songs in tribute accompanied by swaying hips and cries of ‘Lal Salaam’ and ‘Jai Bhim’ broke out.

(Gauri and I had often over two decades disrupted the compulsive solemnity of activist camps and gatherings all over rural Karnataka with our dancing to their songs!)

In the words of Esha Lankesh:

“It is nine years now since I lost her and all I can say is that I can see that her loss has been personal to so, so many here, not just me. Though it has been long years – I was  13 years old when I lost her- and a lot of things like me going to University etc were things she would have loved to be part of, I realised that a lot of us have grown up in the same time, the way Gauri would have wanted us to. And now there is a whole generation of people with the fire that she had and I wish she were here to see. She is missing out on seeing a lot of people who remind me a lot of her. And I am thankful for this programme and for all present here. Because it gives so much strength to know that there are so many people fighting for accountability, equality and justice just the way that she wanted. It’s nice to see that every year it’s not the same people who come to the programme or it would become an echo chamber. And this year it’s a whole new Generation that is giving us hope.”

No wonder then that such re-visitations with contemporary relevance must continue.

Teesta Setalvad is a rights activist and journalist. She is the secretary of Citizens for Justice and Peace, an organisation formed to advocate for the victims of 2002 Gujarat riots.

Courtesy: The Wire

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]]> Midnight Arrest, Daylight Questions: Why was Santosh Pandit taken into custody? https://sabrangindia.in/midnight-arrest-daylight-questions-why-was-santosh-pandit-taken-into-custody/ Mon, 07 Sep 2026 11:56:10 +0000 https://sabrangindia.in/?p=49188 From exposing civic failures to confronting political VIPs, the Pune activist built a massive following—now he faces criminal charges after a midnight arrest

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]]> The midnight arrest of Pune-based activist and YouTuber Santosh Pandit on September 3 has raised a far more consequential question than the allegations levelled against him: whose complaints command the immediate attention of the State, and whose complaints are allowed to languish?

Pandit was picked up from his Kothrud residence at around 1 a.m., shortly after a second complaint was filed over videos in which he allegedly made obscene, sexually coloured and defamatory remarks while targeting Maharashtra cabinet minister Chandrakant Patil, BJP corporator Mitali Salvekar and Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis. A local Pune court, on September 3, sent Pandit into police custody till September 8, as per The Wire. The extraordinary speed and manner of the police response cannot be divorced from the political context in which Pandit was arrested: he had been using his large social-media following to publicly question politicians over roads, civic infrastructure, alleged misuse of power and the preferential treatment routinely enjoyed by the politically connected. That is where the real controversy begins.

The issue is not whether Pandit is “above the law”. He is not. The issue is whether the law suddenly becomes exceptionally efficient when the accused is a vocal critic of those in power— and markedly less, urgent when allegations are directed at the powerful themselves.  Pandit’s arrest therefore cannot be examined merely through the language of the FIR. It has to be examined through the larger pattern of policing dissent in Maharashtra: who is investigated, who is arrested, whose speech is treated as an urgent threat, and whose conduct is tolerated despite repeated complaints.

From civic critic to criminal accused

Pandit has built a substantial following by turning everyday failures of governance into highly visible social-media campaigns. His videos routinely focus on potholes, poor-quality infrastructure, traffic violations and what he describes as preferential treatment for politicians and other VIPs. His YouTube channel, launched in 2022, has grown to more than a million subscribers. Some of his videos have attracted millions of views.

One of his widely circulated videos showed him pursuing a vehicle carrying an allegedly illegal number plate, confronting the driver and approaching the police to demand action. The video eventually showed the vehicle owner apologising and agreeing to correct the violation. Pandit’s activism, however, increasingly brought him into direct confrontation with political figures.

On August 31, he uploaded a video in which he confronted BJP MLC Gopichand Padalkar, a close associate of Chief Minister Fadnavis, over an allegedly non-compliant high-security registration plate and the absence of seat belts. The video reportedly crossed 6.8 million views. Pandit subsequently claimed that he had received threats from persons associated with Padalkar.

This was not the first time he had alleged threats following his criticism of BJP leaders. Earlier, he had claimed that BJP workers had threatened him after he criticised Maharashtra minister and senior BJP leader Chandrakant Patil. Then came the complaints—and, within days, the arrest.

Two complaints, one arrest

Pune activist Santosh Pandit arrested, Image: YouTube/@santosh_pandit6278.

A complaint was first lodged on August 31 by BJP corporator Sunil Pande, reportedly an associate of Chandrakant Patil, over Pandit’s alleged remarks against the minister. A second complaint was subsequently filed at Kothrud Police Station by a 36-year-old Pune Municipal Corporation sanitation worker.

According to The Indian Express, the woman alleged that she had encountered videos in which Pandit made objectionable remarks concerning Patil and a woman corporator. She also referred to another video in which Pandit allegedly used obscene language while questioning Chief Minister Fadnavis over the quality of road-laying work.

The Wire, which reviewed a copy of the FIR, reported that Pandit was booked under Sections 75(1)(iv), 75(3), 356(2) and 352 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), 2023, along with Section 67 of the Information Technology Act. The provisions invoked relate, among other things, to sexually coloured remarks, sexual harassment, defamation, intentional insult and the electronic transmission or publication of allegedly obscene material.

Pandit’s lawyer, advocate Wahed Khan, disputes the characterisation of his client’s language as sexually suggestive. He has argued that the words were being interpreted out of context and were expressions used in everyday parlance.

Why a 1 a.m. arrest?

According to Pandit’s lawyer, police arrived at his home around 12.30 a.m. and took him away. The FIR was registered at Kothrud Police Station at approximately 1.18 a.m. A local court subsequently remanded Pandit to police custody until September 8. The timing has become one of the most contentious aspects of the case.

Khan has argued that the police failed to follow the safeguards governing arrests for offences carrying relatively limited maximum sentences. He specifically invoked Section 35 of the BNSS and the Supreme Court’s safeguards in Arnesh Kumar v. State of Bihar, arguing that a notice to cooperate with the investigation should ordinarily precede arrest where the statutory conditions require it. He further alleged that police issued a notice only after Pandit had already been taken into custody.

Police, however, have maintained that Pandit had previously been served a notice to cooperate with the investigation.

The most uncomfortable aspect of the Pandit case is therefore not simply the language allegedly used by him. It is the apparent disparity in the State’s response to allegations involving different categories of people. An analysis published by The Wire found that 13 of the 39 ministers in the Maharashtra cabinet had serious criminal charges registered against them. BJP minister Nitesh Rane alone had 38 FIRs, according to the newspaper, including 20 concerning alleged hate speeches directed at Muslims involving abuse and threats of violence.

 

The contrast is nevertheless legitimate grounds for public scrutiny. If the police can act with extraordinary speed when a social-media activist is accused of making obscene remarks about a minister and a woman politician, citizens are entitled to ask why comparable urgency is not always visible when allegations of inflammatory, abusive or threatening speech are levelled against powerful political actors.

Opposition cries foul

The arrest has already drawn criticism from opposition parties. NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) spokesperson Anish Gawande described the 1 a.m. arrest as an instance of political intimidation and questioned the alleged failure to comply with Section 35 of the BNSS and the Arnesh Kumar safeguards.

 

Maharashtra Congress chief Harshvardhan Sapkal also criticised the action, asking whether the Modi-Fadnavis government was using police power to intimidate those who question the government.

 

 

The politics behind the videos

Pandit’s own public trajectory adds another dimension to the controversy. In a podcast cited by The Wire, Pandit spoke about losing his travel business and home following the economic fallout from the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. He said that the experience left him angry and looking for an opportunity to challenge the government.

He subsequently supported Narendra Modi and campaigned for the BJP in 2014. Over time, however, he became increasingly disillusioned with the party and began directing his criticism at what he saw as failures of governance and the misuse of political power.  Much of Pandit’s online work is built around an extremely basic civic proposition: politicians and public officials should follow the rules that ordinary citizens are expected to follow. His confrontation with Padalkar over a number plate is precisely the kind of incident that can be uncomfortable for political establishments because it collapses the distance between the ordinary citizen and the political VIP.

 

 

 

Related:

Pune’s DJ Controversy, Ganeshotsav and Assault: The politics of who gets to make noise

Two women journalists allege police assault after questioning Delhi CM, say attack intensified after police heard they were Muslim

Maharashtra SIR draft rolls leave 2.07 crore electors out; Pune records highest exclusions at 28.66 lakh

Mumbai’s everyday life is getting costlier, one essential at a time

The Normalisation of Suicide at IITs: Institutional blindness and failure

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]]> Why are reading habits among Indian students declining? https://sabrangindia.in/why-are-reading-habits-among-indian-students-declining/ Mon, 07 Sep 2026 11:00:47 +0000 https://sabrangindia.in/?p=49185 On the occasion of Teacher's Day, Abhay Kumar, a teacher, writes about his experience in academics and the declining habit of reading among students

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]]> I have been teaching undergraduate students for a considerable period of time and have also been helping young researchers in their academic pursuits. On the basis of my personal experience in the field of academics, I feel that the reading habit among Indian students is declining. However, the bigger question is why is this happening?

Let me first clarify that I am not making a value judgement here. Nor am I pushing forward an argument that students of yesterday were avid readers, while students of the present time are an anti-knowledge lot.

To make such a sweeping generalisation, one would need to conduct a scientific study and take into consideration multiple factors. On the occasion of Teachers’ Day, I simply want to share my own experience—something that has been troubling my mind.

One of the first major signs of the decline of reading culture is the disappearance of shops and stalls selling books, magazines, and newspapers. Even the Xerox shops around colleges and universities are now busy printing and photocopying documents to be submitted to the administration, rather than essays, articles, or relevant portions of books and magazines.

Even newspaper hawkers are hardly visible, not only around colleges in semi-rural areas but also at those located in district headquarters and cities. Around college and university campuses, what one mostly sees is the mushrooming growth of fast-food kiosks. Since the administrations are often unable to run the canteens properly, students have little choice but to go outside and eat junk food.

Inside the campus, library culture is also on the decline. One of the main reasons for this is the lack of library staff. Most of the library staff are contractual workers who are poorly paid. As a result, they often do not work there with a sense of commitment. Even among those who are working, many are not trained in library science. Nor are they sensitized to the needs of readers. The reading hall is also poorly maintained. The seating arrangements and lighting are inadequate. The books are not properly arranged, making it difficult for readers to access them.

However, the growing corruption within the publishing world has also infected our campuses. As a result, a large portion of the books purchased in recent years are simply garbage. Even in the journal sections, substandard journals are purchased while quality journals are often ignored. Everywhere, there are cuts in the budget, and even when money is spent, it is rarely spent on the welfare of students or the promotion of genuine academic activity.

The administration is happy to display this garbage on the shelves of the library in return for hefty kickbacks, while caring little about valuable books that are damaged by pests or due to neglect.

I do not know much about the complex rules and norms that determine how colleges and universities are ranked among the top institutes by government agencies. But my yardstick for judging whether a college or university is academically vibrant is very simple. Whenever I visit a new academic institution, I first try to visit its library because a well-attended library is a sign of a healthy academic environment.

While no bhajan (devotion) is possible without bhojan (food), I next visit the canteen inside the academic premises. A canteen not only provides food but also creates a space for interaction, debate, and discussion. I am sad to say that most universities and colleges cannot boast of having such a happening place. If there are a few such eateries, they are highly commercialised, serving mostly fast food. While the food may be ‘hot’ and ‘spicy’, the public culture there is dull and lifeless.

The shrinking democratic space is no less responsible for the declining reading culture. The administration is becoming more authoritarian day by day. The regime of security and surveillance is intensifying with each passing day. Even teachers often maintain a sense of superiority. Most teachers favour students who act meekly before them, touch their feet, and flatter them at every opportunity.

The caste network is also deeply pernicious on campuses. It is not a coincidence that the students or research scholars favoured by a teacher are often those who belong to his caste. While our teachers project themselves as the biggest “patriots” in public life, in their personal lives they often indulge in what can only be described as anti-national behaviour by practising caste-based discrimination.

Worse still, our educational campuses are not adequately sensitised to the needs and concerns of female students, religious minorities, and differently-abled people. The syllabus has been framed to glorify the past rather than to meet the needs of students in the present. Students from marginalised sections often find it difficult to relate to the course structure and feel alienated from the academic environment. The rise of majoritarianism and intolerance, along with the display of religiosity on campuses, has further alienated minorities.

Discussions and jokes in staff rooms and classrooms are often anti-women. The rampant misogyny prevalent on campuses makes women feel unsafe. Parents, too, often seize this opportunity to further control the freedom of their daughters.

The lack of student activism and the disappearance of debating and seminar culture are among the major reasons why students do not feel motivated to read. Often, student organisations are banned on campuses by the administration on the grounds that they are involved in violence. It is true that some student bodies have been involved in violent activities, and no one is arguing that they should not be held accountable for their misdeeds. But one also needs to recognise that banning student politics is not the solution to violence. Even elections are sometimes marred by violence, but no one argues that elections should be abolished.

Even the seminars held within campuses often fail to achieve their intended purpose. This has much to do with the relationship between funding agencies and the ideologies they seek to impose on the organisers. Seminars have now turned into occasions to facilitate politicians in power and echo the political lines of the establishment, without critically examining whether such policies are indeed framed in the public interest or merely serve vested interests. Since students and researchers are required to produce certificates of participation, they are often more concerned with obtaining the certificate and filling the chairs in the audience than with participating in any meaningful and fruitful discussion.

It is not only the academic spaces that are responsible; parents, too, often impose their own will on their children. We hardly find parents who facilitate their children in pursuing the goals of their choice. Most are in a hurry to see their children settle into high-salaried and secure jobs. Both at home and in our society, a person is often judged “successful” on the basis of how much wealth they have amassed, how trendy their clothes are, and how luxurious a car they drive.

The anti-intellectual environment at homes get extended into our academic spaces. The teachers hardly read. They have forgotten that a good teacher is the one who is first a student. The advancement in career is the bigger concern for the teachers rather than acting as the source of knowledge. They hardly speak on the pressing political issues because they want to remain in the good book of the establishment.

Even if our Constitution gives every citizen the fundamental right to freedom of speech, and the highest court of the country has held that dissent and criticism are integral parts of democracy, a large section of teachers have imposed self-censorship on themselves. They write only when they need papers for promotion, and most of these papers are poorly written and make little sense. Yet they get published as “research papers” because the authors pay publishers huge amounts of money.

Even in the staff room, teachers hardly discuss academic issues. The favourite gossip among male teachers is often about the clothes of their female colleagues, accompanied by rumours about their personal lives and sexual relationships. Worse still, many teachers are excessively flattering towards their seniors while being rude and dismissive towards their students.

All these factors contribute negatively to the lives of our young students. The smarter among them have come to realise that knowledge is not the first criterion for getting jobs in academia. That is why they spend a large amount of their energy flattering their teachers and developing networks with those in the administration and politics. Sensing that joining the political outfits of the ruling party is a more secure way of getting jobs, they are often too busy attending sectarian political programmes rather than spending time in the classroom and library.

Since a large number of students hardly read, they are unable to write. Whenever they turn up to submit their assignments, their writings are often copied and pasted from the internet. These are some of the more disturbing trends that I have noticed while working as a teacher. I do not know how these issues can be addressed. But if India has to excel in the field of knowledge and ensure that its democracy remains meaningful, policymakers cannot afford to ignore these questions.

(Dr Abhay Kumar teaches Political Science. His recently published book is Muslim Personal Law: Definitions, Sources and Contestations (Manohar, 2026). Email: debatingissues@gmail.com)

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]]> Kishtwar Minor’s Rape Case: Selective societal outrage and price of being Gujjar in Kashmir https://sabrangindia.in/kishtwar-minors-rape-case-selective-societal-outrage-and-price-of-being-gujjar-in-kashmir/ Mon, 07 Sep 2026 05:46:42 +0000 https://sabrangindia.in/?p=49164 Recent rapes, assaults and deaths of women and girls from Kashmir’s Gujjar and Bakarwal communities, repressed in the region’s social order and relegated to servitude raises serious questions of gender and Adivasi (indigenous) persons right to life, dignity and access to equal health care

The post Kishtwar Minor’s Rape Case: Selective societal outrage and price of being Gujjar in Kashmir appeared first on SabrangIndia.

]]> A Thirteen-year-old girl was allegedly raped and subsequently died on August 20, 2026 in Chatroo, Kishtwar (J&K), after undergoing an abortion of a seven-month-old pregnancy. She belonged to the Gujjar and Bakarwal community, whose members have historically served as domestic workers, labourers, and pastoral workers across the Chenab region and the Kashmir Valley not merely because of poverty, but because of a deeply entrenched social perception that they are born to serve dominant social groups. The expression “Gujjar kott ya Gujjar koor gasay” (“We need a Gujjar boy or a Gujjar girl”) captures the normalisation of this relationship of servitude.

She was reportedly employed as a domestic worker by the alleged rapist, who was also her neighbour and teacher at the school where she studied in the eighth grade. She carried the pregnancy resulting from the sexual assault for seven months and ultimately died beneath the weight of a stigmatised identity ‘Gujjar’ while her financially and socially vulnerable father was allegedly pressured into compromising and settling through the dominant social apparatus. The tyranny of the local social hierarchy the ‘Kechari milieu’ is said to have terrified her father from the moment the pregnancy became apparent. He was reportedly terrified to succumb” either settle the matter or face consequences. Political cum social intervention of influential and dominant figures, allegedly, including former Sarpanch Haji Ghulam Qadir, raises an even more disturbing question about the manner in which social power can transform justice into a bargain. It was, in effect, a negotiation between the powerful and the vulnerable, as though a butcher were bargaining with a shepherd over the price of a life. After the matter remained unsettled, the girl returned to her father’s home, where she remained for approximately seven months. During this period, a neighbour, Mohd Iqbal, was paid to assume responsibility for the pregnancy and was settled with a certain amount of money. On August 19-20, however, she was reportedly suddenly and secretly taken to Kishtwar hospital. Hospital staff were persuaded that Mohd Iqbal was her husband. An abortion was subsequently carried out without informing her father.

Adivasi (tribal) activist Talib Hussain has claimed that this plan was designed to conceal the identity of the biological father and potentially manipulate subsequent DNA evidence by exchanging or disposing of the foetus through hospital personnel. These allegations, if established through an impartial investigation, would indicate an attempt not merely to terminate a pregnancy but to destroy potential evidence of sexual violence. When the initial reports and allegations are read together, the case raises disturbing similarity with the 2018 rape and murder of the minor tribal girl in Kathua, Jammu and Kashmir. That how social power, political influence, and the vulnerability of a tribal minor intersect.

This is not necessarily an isolated event. Rather, it must be examined within a larger pattern of social stratification and institutional neglect. Consider the case of Suraya Begum of Kalaroos, Kupwara, on January 17, 2019. When she was nine months pregnant, she was reportedly carried on a charpoy through heavy snow to Lal Ded Hospital in Srinagar because the local roads were impassable. At Lal Ded, however, she was allegedly not admitted overnight. Her family repeatedly requested that she be allowed to remain in the hospital, explaining that they had travelled from a distant, snowbound area. They were reportedly refused and told to leave, with the alleged remark: “Gujjar happat” (“You Gujjars are bears”) and “Amis chu fakh yiwan, yim chi Gujjar” (“They smell foul; they are Gujjars”). At approximately 8:30 p.m., Suraya reportedly went into severe labour and delivered a baby girl by the roadside. The new-born died shortly afterwards. Srinagar’s temperature that night was reportedly around −0.7°C.

And how can we ignore Noor Jahan, a 45-year-old woman who was reportedly gang-raped on May 4, 2025 at Nishat, Srinagar? Neither civil society appeared to express comparable outrage, nor did the case receive significant national-media attention. Her case once again exposes the hierarchy of public empathy, whose suffering becomes a national outrage and whose suffering disappears into silence! The tragic death of Razim Akhter on December 23, 2024 at GMC Rajouri, and the fatal delay in medical care reportedly suffered by Naseem Akhter on February 18, 2021 at District Hospital Poonch, are among the recorded cases, yet they should not be dismissed as isolated medical anomalies. They point instead towards a deeper crisis in healthcare infrastructure and access in the border districts, where marginalised and nomadic communities can face disproportionate barriers to timely medical care.

While Gujjar and Bakarwal communities traverse harsh terrains to sustain an important pastoral economy, the state apparatus too often appears incapable of guaranteeing them equal access to healthcare and, ultimately, equal protection of the right to life.

In the Chenab region and, to some extent, in the Kashmir Valley, Gujjars and Bakarwals are often reduced, in the dominant social imagination, to a labouring and servile population. Their social position is frequently determined by dominant groups rather than by their own agency. Justice, therefore, becomes selective, and so does outrage. If Gujjar itself can function as a social slur, and if individuals can be judged through expressions such as “Gujjar khaslat” (“Gujjar traits” or “Gujjar habits”), then the problem is no longer merely individual prejudice. It is a structure of social perception. Generations of Gujjars and Bakarwals have grown up within conditions of poverty, exclusion, geographical isolation, and social stratification. In such a setting, a child can be socially assigned a position even before birth. The prevailing hierarchy can determine not merely where that child will live, but what kind of work, dignity, and social status society expects that child to possess. If a community is historically imagined as born to serve, how can one expect society at large to respond to violence against its members with the same moral urgency accorded to those belonging to socially privileged groups?

The deeper problem, therefore, is that crime, criminality, and the administration of social justice cannot be completely separated from the social structure in which they occur. As Hunter S. Thompson put it, “In a close society where everybody’s guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In the world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.”

According to local media reporter Asif Iqbal Naik, there was allegedly no anaesthesia technician available during the thirteen year old girl’s abortion procedure and, consequently, she may not have been properly anaesthetised. Her initial medical reports, according to him, reportedly support this possibility. Asif also stated that, when he spoke to a woman who performed the girl’s final rites, she described injuries to the victim’s private parts that appeared to have been inflicted unprofessionally. If these facts are independently verified, the absence of qualified medical personnel and the manner in which the procedure was conducted could become crucial elements in determining the circumstances of her death. Otherwise, the thirteen-year-old girl might have survived. The irony is devastating. Article 21 of the Constitution guarantees the right to life and personal liberty to every person, yet social prejudice can determine whose life receives its full protection in practice.

Rape is one thing. But the collective response that follows when families, relatives, community elders, Sarpanches, local leaders, medical personnel, and politically influential individuals allegedly become involved in concealing the consequences of rape is something altogether different. Had she survived, the seven-month-long history of alleged sexual violence, pregnancy, and subsequent attempts at settlement might have not come to light.

Was her life also the culmination of a collective effort to prevent the truth from becoming public? The real tragedy is not merely that one individual allegedly committed sexual violence. It is that a wider social environment which have normalised, concealed, negotiated, and ultimately enabled the consequences of that violence because the victim belonged to a socially marginalised community. This is the brutality of identity-based dehumanisation.

When a society in general have expression such as “Agar toi wechew janglas manz aike anndhh saruf (snake) bai Gujjur, Gujjur gase marun, saruf gasai travun”— “If you ever encounter a Gujjar and a snake at the same time, kill the Gujjar and leave the snake” it becomes necessary to ask what happens when such prejudices enter institutions. How does one expect a doctor, teacher, administrator, political leader, or police officer to respond with ordinary human compassion if the social environment has already taught them to see a particular identity as inferior? It is like expecting a butcher to show compassion towards the goat standing before him. The problem, however, is not the individual butcher alone, it is the social system that has taught him to see the goat merely as an object for slaughter.

The victim may have been beaten, threatened, frightened, humiliated, and psychologically broken during those seven months. She may have cried out to the sky, while the social apparatus around her remained unmoved. And when, in the name of abortion, she allegedly underwent a procedure that ultimately ended her life, her screams may have disappeared into the trenches of the identity assigned to her. Perhaps her greatest tragedy was not simply that she was allegedly raped. It was that her suffering could be negotiated because she was Gujjar. Her identity became the very condition through which her vulnerability was interpreted.

Her screams have yet to shake a society sufficiently to demand a comprehensive and impartial investigation. She may have hoped that her suffering would not disappear into the trench of identity rather a beginning where no other girl would be ruined, bargained over, and ultimately sacrificed beneath the accumulated weight of social stigma. The identity that isolated her from the social mainstream was not created by her. The stigma attached to it was inherited from generations before her.

Gujjar and Bakarwal marginalisation cannot simply be explained through a supposed cultural fear of modernity or by attributing their deprivation to ignorance. Many of them have remained rooted in the pristine valleys and higher altitudes of the Himalayas, but they have simultaneously been left miles behind the rapidly changing capitalist, technological, educational, and globalised world. It was and remains the responsibility of socially privileged sections of society to bring such communities into confidence, to create meaningful access to modern education and to make them feel that they too belong to the wider socio-economic and political order. When that process fails, the responsibility becomes even more urgent for an educated and conscious class emerging from within the marginalised community itself. For example, in twentieth-century Kashmir, Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah became associated, in a different historical context, with the mobilisation of people who had experienced generations of deprivation and political exclusion.

This thirteen-year-old girl must have been asking why has the social mobility achieved by a section of the Gujjar and Bakarwal elite not percolate into a sustained transformation of the conditions of the overwhelmingly deprived majority? The Gujjar and Bakarwal question deserve to be viewed through a similar lens. The relationship between an emerging community elite and an overwhelmingly deprived majority. A considerable socio-economic distance has emerged between sections of the Gujjar elite and the ordinary people whose identity has provided much of the basis for their political and institutional representation. Some politically and economically prosperous members of the community have built political careers and public faces around their tribal belonging. Yet examples of their sustained efforts to mobilise, educate, organise, and unite the most deprived sections of their own community remain comparatively rare.

Her death should not be reduced to another isolated crime report. It should force us to confront the deeper structures that determine whose suffering becomes visible, whose testimony is believed, whose death produces outrage, and whose identity makes suffering easier to ignore.

(The author is a Research Scholar in Modern Indian History at the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU). His writings engage with questions of history, society, identity, and contemporary Indian public discourse)


Related:

J&K: Hospital Refuses to Keep Pregnant Patient Overnight, Baby Dies

 

5 Doctors Suspended After Pregnant Woman’s Death In Jammu And Kashmir

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]]> The Normalisation of Suicide at IITs: Institutional blindness and failure https://sabrangindia.in/the-normalisation-of-suicide-at-iits-institutional-blindness-and-failure/ Mon, 07 Sep 2026 05:32:39 +0000 https://sabrangindia.in/?p=49159 The recent protest at the Lecture Hall of IIT Delhi where slogans of “Investigation, Compensation, and Resignation”, were raised by the student collective raises the crucial demand for redistributive justice, firstly demanding that the administration to recognise these deaths as the failure of institutions to recognise structural inequities, denials and cruelties.

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]]> In the middle of an ongoing suicide crisis, I am compelled to put my pain, anger, and reflections into this small reflective piece. From Rohith Vemula to Jason Arday, from Anitha to Delta, the crisis is a product of systemic failure and the failed project of the welfare state, which was expected to safeguard the interests of the more vulnerable and those who have no resources or cultural capital at their disposal to withstand a highly neo-liberalized, Brahminical, racially segregated, and gender-biased world engulfed in the fraught logics of ‘meritocracy’.

It was hardly two weeks since Jason Arday’s ordeal, which resulted in his suicide- I am rather inclined to term it systemic murder of marginalised bodies. When another Google search, returned with the headline, another IIT student allegedly committed suicide, at what is purportedly the country’s most ‘meritocratic shop’, producing efficient docile bodies for the neoliberal industry!

The recurrence of suicides across IITs compels a question: what makes a student at an institute celebrated as a guarantor of upward economic and social mobility take their own life? Possibly, the explanation lies not within the student at all; rather, the institution itself becomes the focal lens of our inquiry.

Why are these campuses becoming deathscapes?

At dawn on a Saturday in August, a second-year M.Sc. student took his life at IIT Delhi. His suicide stirred the same question that each lost life before his has opened- Is it the institutional environment of the IITs that produces this recurrence?

Recurrence of Suicide:

According to the statistics compiled by independent trackers, drawing on partial government data, records a staggering 160 suicides across IITs within the past two decades. The recent ruling by the Central Information Commission (CIC) flagged a persistent crisis of suicides across IIT campuses. At IIT Delhi alone, eight students have died by suicide in the past two and a half years, roughly once every fourth month at this institution. Nationally, IIT Kharagpur and IIT Kanpur, the notorious ones, have been designated “concentration zones” owing to the high intensity of cases, alongside other premier institutes such as IISC Bangalore.

The rate of recurrence sprouts a question about the institutional experience of students who lost their lives. IITs as institutions invested in the fraught ideal of meritocracy, often function as competitive, toxic workplaces obsessed with productivity optimisation. The institutional environment of IIT needs to be viewed through this framework, in which intense academic pressure, coupled with social burden, creates conditions in which a student’s worth is seen as inseparable from their academic performance.

It is worth stressing that this burden isn’t evenly distributed nor does it reflect the collective institutional experience among students. The vulnerability gets compounded for students specifically hailing from marginalised social locations. Besides the relentless scholarly strain, they also carry the burden of representation- the weight of representing their community in a space that was never designed keeping them in mind. Caste, class and institution isolation intersect here, making the burden heavier. Therefore, framing this as a uniform institutional experience would inadvertently obscure those at greater risk. Each of these deaths lays bare the underlying reality of institutional negligence, the absence of robust student support systems, and the conditions students are left alone to endure. This isn’t merely an anomaly, it points to the long trend of “administrative lapses”, a refusal by universities to acknowledge these deaths as a systemic problem, and a corresponding negligence in curbing further deaths.

The Language of Evasion:

Media treatment of these suicides often frames this recurrence as a consequence of a “chain reaction”, the idea that one student’s suicide triggers suicidal ideation in another with pre-existing suicidal ideation. “Unofficially we are not supposed to discuss it amongst ourselves. Officially everyone knows, as if silence doesn’t spread just as fast, and trigger just as much”, Adarsh*, revealed an IIT student, characterising an undercurrent which runs through whisper networks. Beneath this, as an unofficial and incognito practice, students are advised to refrain from discussing suicide on campus, stemming from fear of “suicide contagion”. Though the clinical validity of this practice is questionable, the social effect of this approach does succeed in suppressing the conversation around this phenomenon, thus concomitantly aiding the institution evade confrontation. Even the administrative responses are composed in a deflecting register. Every death follows the same customary email template, under the header, “Sad news”, a performance of concern that changes nothing, while actively obscuring institutional accountability narratives. Further, the pattern of vocabulary across institutions deploying phrases such as “isolated incident”, “mental health” and “committee formed” remains consistent. This language reduces structural issues into a pathological and an individual predisposition.

Suicide cannot be adequately understood as a purely individual or psychological phenomenon. Notwithstanding the solitary nature of the act itself, the degree to which an individual experiences a sense of belonging, connectedness, and social integration constitutes as equally significant determinants. When this integration weakens, or when the society’s moral framework becomes either too rigid or too loose, a state of crisis unfolds within an individual. Institutions do not merely create rules; they actively structure an individual’s perception of the self and of success and failure. These normative rules constitute the very persona of the “successful individual”.

At the IITs, this image resonates with extraordinary intelligence, relentless competitiveness, and interminable productivity optimisation, all without exhibiting any vulnerability. A student’s failure to live up to this created image is not read as failure of the system, but as a matter of personal inadequacy. It’s framing as an individual’s inadequacy makes the pressure so effective, thereby requiring no external enforcement. The internalisation by students towards relentlessly performing and optimizing themselves, becomes both the source of pressure and its target. Academic competition curdles into self-exploitation, where any inadequacy towards meeting these high-academic standards is experienced as a moral and existential failure of the self, never as a flaw in the standard itself. Thus, the individual becomes the site of issue, their personal dejection becomes the victim, while the institution remains unquestioned.

Speaking of the recent death, when a death is coded as mental illness rather than the outcome of institutional negligence, issues such as “denial of hostel facilities”, “denied major academic project” never come close to being registered as evidence of a structural pattern. In the wider frame, explaining such a crisis through individualisation escapes scrutiny of deeper machineries such as the graded caste hierarchy and class inequality. These deaths aren’t mere idiosyncrasies; they’re better understood as failures of a system infused with institutional apathy. With regard to the structural pattern, there’s another dormant failure compounding the individualisation narrative: the absence of a standardised, consistent national database tracking students’ suicide across IITs. The existing data from the Supreme Court, Parliament, or the Ministry of Education are fragmented and mutually inconsistent, with figures either overlapping or spanning different timeframes. The very state apparatus meant to hold these institutions accountable is operating in the absence of a stable object of knowledge. This form of instability isn’t merely a clerical failure; it puts the political class in an uncomfortable position. Taken together, the individualisation narrative and the absence of reliable data reflect the practice of evasion by both the state and its institutions.

Fracturing the culture:

The culture of protest at IIT Delhi isn’t ordinary. It is highly unusual for IIT students to ruffle the administration’s feathers with this kind of agonistic confrontation, since the fear ingrained in the students here is deeply structural, not incidental. Any dissent has historically carried consequences, sometimes strained relationships with supervisors, rigged academic records, or being unofficially marked as an “unserious” student. Oftentimes, the culture of being indifferent to injustices within these institutions also emanates from the fear of getting penalised.  This suppression, and the fear of being labelled, has long dissuaded any dissent from emerging at all. The silence over this many deaths can plausibly be attributed to why these suicides became routine, rather than rupture. Yet this protest cannot be read in isolation, it also shares the wider wave of dissent witnessed across the state in recent months.  Weeks earlier, the nationwide protest drew the same generation onto the streets, ferreting accountability towards the precarious state of the Indian education system. The scale of mobilisation followed by Hrishikesh’s death is something that none earlier deaths within IIT, in recent memory, has produced.

The sloganeering of “Investigation, Compensation, and Resignation”, by the student collective in the Lecture Hall of IIT Delhi speaks to a demand for redistributive justice, from the administration to recognize these deaths as failure of institutions. In doing so, it has succeeded in rekindling the demand for institutional accountability from the institutions, in which earlier deaths, despite their recurrence, remained absent from public discourse. The protest extends beyond symbolic administrative fixes towards challenging the structural flaws persisting within the system. Beyond individual diagnosis, redistributive justice here would require adequately funded mental health personnel, not the faculty sporting a counsellor label, mandatory compensation for the deceased’s family, and ensuring faculty diversity proportionate to student diversity within committees. Such demands challenge the system to rethink and requisition the existing mechanisms and their speculation in academic spaces, which are deemed sufficient once the pressure becomes overwhelming.

According to Hrishikesh’s mother’s account, shared publicly during the protest, the deceased who lost his father years ago, had been battling mental health issues, previously been hospitalised for the same and later resumed his studies. He had also confided in the counsellor at the institute about his struggles. In the time since, he was denied “a major academic project under his supervisor, “denied hostel facilities”, due to his mental health illness. These facts reflect the administrative indifference shown towards his distress, despite having sought support from what the institute offers. When an institution flags a student as “severely depressive”, or exhibiting “suicidal ideation”, this identification should be followed by institutional duty of care, rather than employing this diagnostic function to depriving the student of essential amenities and pushing them towards further precarity. This scenario, in its most precise sense, is the institutional betrayal the deceased went through.

The larger question is, not merely to counsel students to survive within these institutions, but to confront the relentless culture of self-optimisation, and other structural harms such as caste-based discrimination, class inequality, and cultural alienation. Counselling isn’t the panacea for student’s survival, no specific remedy is, least of all counselling alone. Institutional redressal mechanisms such as counselling and campus wellness centres cannot mitigate the kind of distress manufactured by the institution themselves. Placing such mechanisms equivalent to addressing academic pressure silently shifts the blame onto the student’s incapacity to cope, rather than introspecting into conditions they are expected to cope within. It is worth situating this issue in a wider frame. When in a hyper neoliberal environment, where job markets are contracting, mental health concerns are soaring, even meritocratic showcase institutions such as IITs are no longer reliably delivering the economic security it once seems promising, it is worth laying out briefly here to not read these deaths as outcome of individual inadequacy, but these vulnerabilities as produced by the society itself. These deaths are often accumulated results of adverse conditions infused within the institutions.

*Adarsh (name changed for the reasons of maintaining anonymity of the respondent) is a scholar at IIT Delhi who shared his experience of being in the institute following a student’s suicide.

(The author is a second-year PhD scholar at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Her doctoral research examines the student suicide crisis in higher educational institutions in India, with a particular focus on caste-based structural discrimination as a contributing factor)

Related:

67 suicides in central institutes of higher learning despite 80 % claiming SC/ST cells for “assistance”

Another student, belonging to the Scheduled Caste community, dies by suicide in IIT

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Lessons Unlearned: Nine years after the Thorat Committee report

The Death of Merit: Dalit Suicides in institutes of higher learning

Systemic Prejudice, Absence of Grievance Redressal reasons for Dalit Suicides: Teacher Testimonies

A letter that should shake our world: Dalit scholar suicide triggers outrage

Rohith Vemula’s ‘institutional murder’: Five years on, family and friends still wait for justice

REPLUG: Rohith Vemula, Your Sacrifice was Not in Vain

“Highly appalling to see SIT ignoring rank caste discrimination Darshan faced despite overwhelming evidence”: Ramesh Solanki

IIT Bombay Dalit student death: Dr Bhalchandra Mungekar, ex Rajya Sabha member, demands SIT probe into his death 

Mumbai Dharna for Darshan Solanki makes calls for law against caste discrimination

 

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]]> Closing of the Indian Mind: Campus subjugation, intellectual mediocrity, & death of democratic assertion https://sabrangindia.in/closing-of-the-indian-mind-campus-subjugation-intellectual-mediocrity-death-of-democratic-assertion/ Thu, 03 Sep 2026 11:19:58 +0000 https://sabrangindia.in/?p=49128 The author, a senior academic analyses the decay in Indian public universities and traces the decline to a state patronage, entrenched, unaccomplished elite and the absence of true representation through student and teacher body elections

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]]> Higher education institutions are designed to function as engines of critical inquiry, led by scholars of international academic distinction capable of pushing the boundaries of human knowledge and challenging entrenched authority. When a university functions as intended, its faculty commands intellectual respect and its student body exercises democratic vigilance. What Indian higher education exhibits today, however, is a deliberate inversion of this model. The best of contemporary public universities of India have been systematically hollowed out, transforming from a site of intellectual generation into a compromised administrative space where under-accomplished academics lord over disenfranchised students, while the urgent realities of economic precarity and unemployment are buried under an enforced silence.

The contemporary economic crisis, dangerously hollowed out middle classes and mounting unemployment (of their children) has brought Indian youth to the brink of becoming Weary Generations (udaas naslein), an expression used by the Urdu novelist, Abdullah Husain (1931-2015), for the generation wasted in Partition, violence, migration and traumatic displacement.

How does one then place or read the energies and fearlessness of the present upsurge be it in Bihar, UP, Delhi or Mumbai? It is not just these seemingly apolitical mobilisations but also smaller left formations (AISA, SFI) that have sustained protests, a) spoken and highlighted education and access for all b) examined structural failures, yes, but also lack of voice and representation c) refused to be black-holed into the Hindu-Muslim paradigm d) broken through a paralysis of fear; e) while in Delhi and Mumbai these may have been dominated by a class difficult for the far right to pigeonhole, in Bihar they are subaltern students. Plus, a protest by Adivasi/tribal students in Maharashtra reached a successful end (though they had been fasting for over 47 days) after Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi highlighted their demands. LOP Gandhi speaking of withdrawing criminal cases, getting an FIR lodged, and speaking on youth issues of access and social justice together show how the narrative is for once not being dominated by the regime. The icing on the cake is the union government’s concrete withdrawal of FIRs against many/most if not all the protesters.

Global history demonstrates that youth energy in times of crisis takes one of two distinct paths: violent criminal implosion or revolutionary democratic renewal. In May 1968, France witnessed an explosive student movement that began on university campuses like Nanterre and Sorbonne. French students did not merely demand educational reforms; they linked arms with the working class, paralysed a Gaullist state, and fundamentally reshaped modern European political consciousness through raw democratic assertion. Conversely, where youth energy is denied legitimate political expression and institutional avenues of dissent, it devolves into structural criminality. In 20th-century Sicily (in Italy), the complete absence of democratic avenues for youth advancement permitted underworld gangsterism to swallow an entire generation—a social decay famously captured in Mario Puzo’s literary studies of omertà, patronage, and syndicate power.

Indian campuses today stand precariously at these very crossroads. The current stagnation stands in sharp contrast to the analytical framework established by Philip Altbach in his books, Turmoil and Transition: Higher Education and Student Politics in India (1968) and Student Politics in India (1972). Altbach demonstrated that students in developing democracies operate as a vital “incipient elite” and a primary political conscience. Unencumbered by institutional vested interests, they function as a catalyst for broader societal democratization. This theoretical reality materialised during the 1960s and 1970s across northern and western India. The Navnirman Movement in Gujarat in 1973–1974 began over price hikes in university canteens and escalated into a mass agitation that dissolved the state legislative assembly. Shortly after, the Bihar Movement of 1974, spearheaded by student leaders under Jayaprakash Narayan (1902-1979), directly challenged state authoritarianism and catalysed the nationwide opposition that eventually defeated Congress rule in 1977, after the Emergency (1975-77).

The anti-Congress political forces that seized state power on the back of these youth mobilisations recognized a key reality: an organised, democratically elected student body is an unpredictable, counter-hegemonic force. Consequently, once in power, the anti-Congress and regional regimes (communal reactionaries, single caste, personalized, dynastic and champions of identity-based divisive political forces) systematically disarmed the very machinery that elevated them. Province after province, most notably Uttar Pradesh, campus elections have been suspended across state universities for years, banning, curbing, or neutering Students’ Unions.

Crucially, this structural paralysis of student democracy was not merely a post-2014 phenomenon under the BJP regime; key policy frameworks that enabled this containment were set in motion earlier, notably under UPA-II through the implementation of the Lyngdoh Committee recommendations. As Albeena Shakil highlights in Economic and Political Weekly (2008), the Lyngdoh Committee was constituted following Supreme Court orders to frame guidelines on student union elections—focusing on ‘curbing criminalisation’, ensuring financial transparency, and setting eligibility criteria. However, the committee’s recommendations introduced rigid constraints, such as a maximum age limit of 28 years for research scholars and restricting candidates from contesting office-bearer positions more than once.

The fundamental flaw in this approach was its mechanical, uniform enforcement across vastly different universities without accounting for their specific institutional characters. The Lyngdoh Committee report itself explicitly acknowledged the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) model as an exemplary “model to be followed”—a peaceful, direct election process conducted entirely by students through an independent, elected Student Election Committee without administrative interference, money, or muscle power. Yet, despite JNU’s flawless democratic track record, the Supreme Court stayed the JNUSU elections in 2008 on technical procedural grounds like the candidate age limits and re-contesting of posts. By imposing arbitrary eligibility constraints and administrative control over a self-regulated, highly participatory student democracy, the policy environment under UPA-II severely weakened the capacity of student bodies to function as independent, capably led representative unions.

To understand how youth energy is absorbed in the absence of democratic representation, Craig Jeffrey’s 2009 essay on Meerut University, Fixing Futures: Educated Unemployment, Youth, and Politics in North India, provides the necessary framework. Jeffrey demonstrates how structural unemployment converts campuses into waiting rooms. Deprived of representative unions to bargain collectively against systemic failures, young people are forced into individual survival mechanisms. They become fixers (jugaad intermediaries, or brokers, dalals), trading political compliance for minor administrative concessions or informal rents. The failure of contemporary campuses to rise up in the style of global youth protests or digital mobilisations is not due to apathy; it is the direct structural result of an environment where collective bargaining has been replaced by atomised patronage networks akin to the Sicilian boss-client relationship.

This suppression of student democracy occurs alongside a mounting crisis of economic precarity backed by grim statistical realities. Data from the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the Institute for Human Development (IHD) India Employment Report reveals that educated youth bear the brunt of the nation’s job crisis. Youths account for nearly 83% of the total unemployed workforce in India, with the unemployment rate for university graduates standing at an astonishing 29.1%—nearly nine times higher than for those without formal schooling. Furthermore, the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) metrics continuously highlight that urban youth unemployment hovers at elevated levels between 13.6% and 14.3%, while roughly 90% of employed youth are pushed into informal, unprotected work. Despite holding degrees, millions of graduates remain trapped in underemployment, gig work, or endless competitive exam preparation. Yet, because campuses lack elected Students’ Unions to channel this systemic frustration into organised political demands, this massive reservoir of youth precarity remains politically inert, barring the latest ongoing movements. India, like the Germany of the 1930s, is on the brink of driving the unemployed youth and the campuses towards political extremism, crime, and murderous narco-culture.

Compounding this crisis is the wholesale capture of university governing bodies by pliant, regime-acolyte administrators and accomplishment-deficient academics. In his scathing critique of Indian higher education, Asking for Trouble: Crises with a Meaning (1984), veteran educationist Amrik Singh (d. 2010) laid bare how the Indian university system was being subverted from within by weak administrative leadership and corrupt appointments. Decades later, in the mid-2020s, Amrik Singh’s earlier warnings have metastasized into absolute reality. A knowledge campus must be led by scholars of recognised distinction, who exercise moral and inspirational influence upon the students. Instead, the internal governing bodies of Indian universities, such as Executive Councils, Academic Councils, Selection Committees, and Vice-Chancellorships, have been stuffed with under-accomplished, pliant, sycophantic individuals whose primary credential is ideological compliance and administrative servitude to the ruling political apparatus.

Across state and central universities, appointments to the highest academic offices routinely bypass scholars with high citation indices, major research monographs, or international peer recognition. Instead, pliant, regime-acolyte Vice-Chancellors with minimal publication records and negligible scholarly impact are installed as political commissars. To maintain their illegitimate control, these Vice-Chancellors surround themselves with similarly under-accomplished internal academics, who function as key collaborators and administrative fixers. Selection panels are shamelessly rigged to bypass highly cited, productive researchers in favour of candidates whose sole qualification is political alignment. Consequently, statutory bodies intended to protect academic freedom are transformed into rubber-stamp committees that penalize dissenting faculty, manipulate recruitment, and ignore systemic corruption.

This institutional decay manifests in distinct ways across major, historic, residential and state-funded campuses, illustrating the stark difference between passive compliance and active resistance.

At the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), an internal administrative oligarchy has long controlled key university apparatuses. With the prolonged absence of elected student union checks, a small network of senior teacher-administrators has maintained an unchallenged hold over the campus. This environment has allowed serious institutional irregularities to persist—ranging from a huge fee scam, illegal annual increments, illegal placements in the Old Pension Scheme (OPS), and financial opacities in civil construction contracts to administrative nepotism, the illegal retention of perks, unauthorized security deployment, and questionable pension schemes. Rather than challenging these abuses, executive bodies and elected teacher associations have largely chosen silence. At the same time, they offer instant, sharp, and unparliamentary reactions against internal whistle-blowers who expose the internal rot of the administration as well as elected bodies. The narrative-setting elites among Muslims rally desperately to fight for the minority status of AMU, but go silent on rampant irregularities within the very university of theirs. Further, they don’t mobilise themselves with equal alacrity and enthusiasm on other issues of social and gender justice, caste exclusions and economic grievances.

To make things far worse, this specific kind of minority-ism finds support from Left-Liberals. Operating under an unwritten code of Omertà, reminiscent of the institutionalized silence of Sicilian mafia structures depicted in Mario Puzo’s novels, they shield administrative failures under the pretext of protecting institutional identity from external hostility. In AMU this code of Omertà is turned into a more dangerous tool. Internal whistle-blowers are hounded, maligned, vilified, and humiliated by plunderers disguising as men of religiosity. They play dangerous politics of demonstrative religiosity and piety, giving a drum-beating clarion call of “Qaum in danger”. It is an open secret among campus insiders that these very demonstrably and instrumentally “pious” Muslim minority professors queue up in large numbers before Sangh functionaries running the Rashtriya Muslim Manch, intending to become Vice Chancellors (Felix Pal, 2020, offers an insight as to why Muslims join it), even while surreptitiously instigating common Muslim youth that the incumbent regime is rabidly anti-Muslim.

Globally too, Peter Fleming’s 2021 book, Dark Academia: How Universities Die, rightly diagnoses that with the neo-liberalisation of higher education over the last 20 years, universities have been turned into psychological hells for professionally committed academics.

Yet, despite all these odds, the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) demonstrates how active representation can disrupt administrative opacity. On August 13, 2026, the JNU Teachers’ Association (JNUTA), alongside the elected JNU Students’ Union (JNUSU), held a joint press conference at New Delhi’s Press Club of India. Rather than hiding inner ills, they publicly detailed administrative irregularities, arbitrary changes to promotion guidelines, and compromised recruitment procedures enforced by the university executive. Despite facing intense administrative pressure, the presence of an elected student union—built on JNU’s long-standing tradition of self-managed student democracy that survived even the legal curbs of the Lyngdoh recommendations—allowed JNU to maintain a counter-hegemonic force against administrative overreach.

The tragedy of contemporary Indian public universities is an existential crisis of purpose. When campuses are stripped of democratic unions, handed over to regime-acolyte Vice-Chancellors, and silenced by co-opted faculty collaborators, they cease to function as spaces of higher learning and degenerate into administrative fiefdoms. Indian youth stand at a decisive crossroads: to remain passive captives within waiting rooms of managed mediocrity, or to reclaim the historic mantle of May 1968. Reclaiming the university requires breaking the institutional code of silence, ousting unaccomplished administrative syndicates, restoring elected Students’ Unions, and transforming quiet frustration into organised political agitation. Of course, ignoring or delaying the task of employment creation is absolutely unaffordable for India at this point of time.

[The author, a Professor teaches Modern and Contemporary History at Aligarh Muslim University. His X-handle is: @sajjadhist]

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‘We Cannot Be Afraid’: Rhiya Ahir in Conversation with Teesta Setalvad

The post Closing of the Indian Mind: Campus subjugation, intellectual mediocrity, & death of democratic assertion appeared first on SabrangIndia.

]]> His Name Survived SIR. Then Police Took Him Away: The Unexplained Detention of 66-Year-Old Jalil Akhtar https://sabrangindia.in/his-name-survived-sir-then-police-took-him-away-the-unexplained-detention-of-66-year-old-jalil-akhtar/ Thu, 03 Sep 2026 10:48:44 +0000 https://sabrangindia.in/?p=49125 Ground Report (Video Inside) | Akhtar’s family says the 66-year-old has lived in India for generations and possesses voter ID, Aadhaar, ration card and land documents. Yet, they allege, he was taken from home at night on suspicion of being a Bangladeshi national

The post His Name Survived SIR. Then Police Took Him Away: The Unexplained Detention of 66-Year-Old Jalil Akhtar appeared first on SabrangIndia.

]]> Raiganj: For most people, seeing their name on the final electoral roll after the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) is a moment of relief. For 66-year-old Jalil Akhtar, however, the story has taken a far more disturbing turn.

His name is on the voter list. His family says he has voted in India. He has a voter ID, Aadhaar card, ration card and a land deed in his name.

Yet, according to his family, Akhtar was taken away from his home in Karan Dighi, Uttar Dinajpur, late on the night of June 29, allegedly on suspicion of being a Bangladeshi national.

Nearly two-and-a-half months later, he is still not home.

When Akhtar did not return that night, his family initially thought he might have gone to the mosque to offer prayers. It was only later that they learnt that police personnel from a local camp had allegedly visited his house and taken him away.

For his wife, Tofa Bibi, the question has remained painfully simple.

“If he is an Indian citizen, why was he taken away like this? It has been two months, yet he has still not returned home,” Bibi told eNewsroom (Watch the video).

His Name Is on the Voter List. So Why Is Jalil Akhtar in Custody?

Akhtar’s family says he has lived in India for generations.

They point to the documents they have — his voter ID, Aadhaar card, ration card and a land deed in his name. They also say the names of his ancestors appear in old electoral rolls.

The family further claims that Akhtar exercised his right to vote this year.

For them, that makes his detention difficult to understand.

They say they have never known Akhtar to have travelled to Bangladesh. They are also unsure why his nationality came under suspicion in the first place.

The events of June 29 remain particularly difficult for them to forget.

According to relatives and residents, police arrived at Akhtar’s home late at night and took him away.

At first, nobody knew where he was.

Some villagers thought he had gone to the mosque. When he did not return, residents began looking for him. It was then, according to the family, that they learnt that police personnel from the local camp had visited his home.

The family later came to know that Akhtar had allegedly been kept at different holding centres.

They also claim that during court proceedings, he was described as a resident of Thakurgaon district in Bangladesh.

That is something the family disputes.

They say Akhtar has spent his life in India and has never travelled to Bangladesh.

‘If He Is an Indian Citizen, Why Was He Taken Away?’

For Bibi, the long separation has brought a different kind of worry.

Her husband is 66. The family says he is diabetic.

“He has been away from home for so long. We don’t know what will happen to him,” Bibi said.

Akhtar has two sons. Both work as migrant labourers in other states. He also has two daughters, both of whom are married.

With the sons away for work and the daughters living with their own families, Bibi has been left to deal with the uncertainty at home.

She does not know when her husband will return.

She also does not know what will happen to him if the authorities ultimately decide that he is not an Indian citizen.

The family fears that Akhtar could be sent to Bangladesh. They insist that he has never been there.

Residents have also reportedly raised their voices demanding his release.

But the question of Akhtar’s nationality is now before the court.

Rakesh Singh, Superintendent of Police, Islampur district, told The Telegraph that Akhtar is in judicial custody and that the court will take a decision. The matter, he said, is entirely sub judice.

Akhtar’s lawyer, Mukhtar Ahmed, says the family has already submitted the necessary documents before the court to establish his citizenship.

According to Ahmed, successive hearing dates have been fixed, while Akhtar has remained in jail for the past two-and-a-half months.

The lawyer said Akhtar has been languishing in custody despite the documents submitted in his case.

Dulal Rajbanshi, convenor of the Vote Rights Protection Coordination Committee, whose statement was published in The Telegraph, alleged that there were preparations to send the 66-year-old back to Bangladesh.

Rajbanshi described such a move as a violation of human and constitutional rights.

He also said police have so far failed to establish before the court that Akhtar is an illegal Bangladeshi national.

Those claims are disputed matters before the court and have not been finally established.

What Evidence Does the Administration Have?

The case leaves a number of questions unanswered.

What evidence does the administration have to establish that Akhtar is a Bangladeshi national?

How were the Indian documents held by him examined and verified?

If his name appears on the electoral roll and his family says he voted this year, what led the authorities to question his nationality?

And under what legal process has a 66-year-old man remained in custody for more than two months?

These are questions for the administration and the court to answer.

For Akhtar’s family, however, the matter is not about a legal argument alone.

It is about a man who was at home one night and did not come back.

His sons continue to work in other states. His daughters have their own families. His wife is still waiting.

The SIR process may have left Jalil Akhtar’s name on the electoral roll.

But for his family, that has not brought the relief they expected.

Instead, they are waiting for the return of a husband, father and grandfather whose nationality is now being contested.

And every day that passes leaves Bibi with the same question:

When will Jalil Akhtar come home?

Courtesy: https://enewsroom.in

The post His Name Survived SIR. Then Police Took Him Away: The Unexplained Detention of 66-Year-Old Jalil Akhtar appeared first on SabrangIndia.

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