"Bloody Kashmiri, chant Modi Modi," CAH documents ruthless police assault in JMI and AMU
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New Delhi: "Kashmiri Saalay, Bharat mein rehna hai to Modi Modi kehna hai," (Bloody Kashmiri, if you want to live in India, you have to chant Modi Modi) students of Jamia Millia Islamia were bawled upon by the police officers who were rampaging in the campus on the night of 15th December 2019.
On the said night, students of Jamia Millia Islamia in New Delhi and Aligarh Muslim University in Uttar Pradesh, faced disproportionate violence at the hands of security officials for holding protests against contentious Citizenship Amendment Act.
Citizens Against Hate (CAH), a Delhi based collective, has documented the shuddery account of victims of police violence in its 124-page report titled "The Dismantling of Minority Education."
The report is based on 209 testimonies of students from AMU and JMI campuses collected between 14th December 2019 and late February 2020. The report lays out the events chronologically, details the patterns of violence and examines the continuing criminalisation of students.
On 15th December, the Delhi Police and the Rapid Action Force officials who entered the JMI campus without permission of the administration, unleashed inhuman violence using weaponries, pellets, rubber bullets, live ammunitions, tear gas shells and sound bombs.
The police officials perpetrated gruesome violence upon the students to inflict bone fracture and head injuries.
Women students were not spared from the violence and they were horribly attacked by their religious identity. The policemen pulled off the students' Hijabs, assaulted them sexually and beat in their genitals to cause vaginal injuries.
The police unleashed violence inside the campus after smashing the CCTVs and vandalising the campus properties. Students who were in research rooms, reading halls and Masjid were not let go unharmed.
A student with a disability tried to hide beneath the table in the reading hall. As he had undergone multiple surgeries on his head, he attempted to take shelter along with some Kashmiri women students. However, the police dragged him out, thrashed him and hurled communal slurs against the students.
"There were some Kashmiri women students who were hiding in the corner of the room behind some tables. I saw them and called them for help. When they saw me completely helpless, they dragged me towards themselves. The police started beating those women as well. We got asphyxiated because of the teargas in the entire floor, but they didn't let us leave the room. One of the officers of the police called me, 'Kashmiri saalay, Bharat mein rehna hai to Modi Modi kehna hai'.
The accounts of the AMU students are also spine-chilling in its details.
The students narrated how the police delayed medical aid and refused the lawyers permission to meet them when they were lodged in police station. The victims were also delayed medical attention and in an horrifying account, a victim explained how the doctors of AIIMS refused to attend the injured students.
The report has recommendations for the Delhi Commission for Women, for the JMI and the AMU, for the Uttar Pradesh state government and for the Central government.
The report demands the Centre to ratify Convention Against Torture to which India is a signatory since 1998, and ensure that a comprehensive legislation is made to prevent, prosecute and punish torture.