India News | 2020 Violence Part of 'larger Story' to Quash Dissent Through Misuse of Power: JNUTA

New Delhi, Jan 5 (PTI) The 2020 violence at Jawaharlal Nehru University was part of a larger story of putting down dissent through brute misuse of official power, the university's teachers' association said on Friday.

Violence broke out in JNU on January 5, 2020, as masked men armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus.

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On the fourth anniversary of the violence on Friday, the Jawaharlal Nehru Teachers' Association (JNUTA) slammed the "callous attitude" of the then vice-chancellor towards the injured and reports of "assistance" the mob received from his administration.

The JNUTA alleged that the violence was encouraged, if not deliberately organised, with the purpose of "teaching a lesson" to students and faculty who were protesting against the exorbitant hike in hostel fees.

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Today marks the fourth anniversary of the horrific attack on students and faculty of JNU by a masked mob brandishing rods and pelting stones. The news and images of that unprecedented assault were splashed across the media, shocking the nation and the world, the JNUTA said in a statement.

"Those chilling images, and many more which were captured on mobile phones but strangely remained unrecorded by any official CCTV camera or security staff, remain etched in the memories of all those who directly experienced that violence and the deep sense of insecurity that gripped the campus in its aftermath," it said.

That four years have passed since, without any of the culprits being brought to book by either the JNU administration or the Delhi Police serves to vindicate JNUTA's position of their complicity in the violence, it said.

"This is the obvious conclusion to be arrived at from the fact that the mob was allowed to run riot despite the presence of both the JNU security and the police on campus and their prior awareness about the direction things were heading in, no preventive measures were put into place to prevent the violence.

"Not only did they fail to respond to several calls for help and action during the incident, video recordings that became public also showed the mob being 'escorted' out of the JNU main gate by the police," the JNUTA alleged.

"The JNUTA is conscious of the fact that what transpired four years ago in JNU is part of a larger story of putting down dissent through brute misuse of official power," it added.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)