LPU unrest: HC seeks Punjab response on alleged rape at university
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Chandigarh: The Punjab and Haryana High Court on Wednesday directed the Punjab Police to clarify whether a student was raped at Lovely Professional University (LPU) before violence broke out on the campus, Bar and Bench reported.
A bench sought a status report from the Punjab government in a petition filed by an LPU student seeking a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into the violence that erupted on the university campus.
The court asked the Punjab government to specify “whether any incident…occurred as was reported on Reddit” on September 26.
It also directed the police to inform the court about the steps taken to verify the allegation. If no such incident had taken place, the police were asked to inform the court about the steps taken to have the social media post removed.
The allegation of rape on campus has not been confirmed. The matter arose from an unverified Reddit post claiming that a worker had raped a student on campus, following which the university sent her home and she later died by suicide, Live Law reported.
The petition said the Reddit post and subsequent WhatsApp messages prompted around 2,000 students to gather outside a girls’ hostel. Some protesters subsequently blocked National Highway 44 between Phagwara and Jalandhar.
The petitioner has claimed that the violence was not a spontaneous protest but a planned attack intended to create unrest on the campus.
Additional Advocate General Chanchal K Singla told the court that FIRs had been registered and an investigation was under way into both the alleged rape and the source of the Reddit post.
“We are in touch with Reddit and trying to find out the source of it,” Bar and Bench quoted Singla as saying.
The court has listed the matter for further hearing next week.
The agitation began on Saturday after students alleged that an “outsider working as a plumber” had entered a student’s hostel room and raped her three days earlier. The protesting students claimed that the university administration had failed to take action following the alleged sexual assault.
The protests turned violent on Sunday, with students damaging university property, setting some objects on fire and blocking the Jalandhar-Phagwara highway. Videos shared online showed some protesters shouting, “we want justice”.
The university, however, disputed the allegation. LPU Registrar Monica Gulati said the claim of rape on campus “appears to be a deliberate and concerted attempt to malign the reputation of the university and tarnish its image”.
In a social media post on Sunday evening, the university shared a video of three students who were purportedly staying in Room 504 of Girls’ Hostel 3, where the alleged assault was reported to have taken place.
In the video, the three students said no such incident had taken place in their room and appealed to the police and fellow students not to repeatedly disturb them in the name of an investigation. They also said they would inform their parents if they were troubled further.
Soon afterwards, however, another video emerged on social media in which the same three students said they had been instructed on what to say and that their statements had been used without their knowledge or consent.
The university suspended classes for 10 days on Monday and postponed its mid-term examinations until further notice.
The High Court is now examining the circumstances surrounding the alleged incident and the events that followed, while the police investigation into the allegations and the source of the social media claim remains under way.
