On day of Citizens’ March, JNU VC sets up inquiry committee

New Delhi: The Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) administration has constituted a five-member committee to look into Sunday’s incident. Students were brutally attacked and injured by masked men allegedly belonging to the Bharatiya Janata Party-linked student body, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidya Parishad (ABVP).

A notification released today, January 9, informed that the JNU Vice-Chancellor(VC), M. Jagadesh Kumar, has set up the committee of five professors including Sushant Mishra from School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies; Mazhar Asif, School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies; Sudheer Pratap Singh, School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies; Santosh Shukla, School of Sanskrit and Indic Studies, and Baswati Das, School of Social Sciences.

Also on January 9, JNU students have organised a "Citizens' March" in support of public education and inclusion and against violence. The march, scheduled to start at Mandi House at noon was delayed because the Delhi Police allegedly attempted to stop students from leaving the campus.

Delhi Police is here to stop us. They, however, could not stop the ABVP terrorists during the #JNUTerrorAttack .
We are protesting the attack on our President, on our students and on our Professors.
You should not have dared to attack JNU.
We shall fight, we shall win. #VCHatao pic.twitter.com/1cz8mXKdO7

— JNUSU (@JNUSUofficial) January 9, 2020

The notification was issued following the VC’s meeting with the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) officials on January 8. The JNU Teachers Association (JNUTA) and JNUSU had earlier asked for a “judicial enquiry” into the Sunday’s violence as they accused the administration of “encouraging the violence”.

Both JNUTA and JNUSU have had the longstanding demand that the VC should step down. Meanwhile, over 250 senior academics and university administrators from 22 countries have endorsed a petition to sack the JNU VC drafted by Prof. Arjun Appadurai of New York University and Dr. Priyamvada Gopal of Cambridge University.

On Sunday, January 5, a mob, allegedly linked to the ABVP, entered the university premises wearing black masks and armed with iron rods and attacked students and teachers.

Around 34 students, including JNU Students’ Union (JNUSU) President Aishe Ghosh, were admitted to the AIIMS trauma centre following the attack, according to the Press Trust of India . On Monday, January 6, ABVP Delhi’s joint secretary Anima Sankar had confirmed to Times Now that it was indeed ABVP workers who were in the viral images.

Update: This copy has been updated to include a petition signed by senior academics from around the world.

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