The Delhi High Court on Wednesday agreed to hear a PIL seeking setting up of a fact-finding committee to look into the violence at Jamia Millia Islamia University that took place on the night of December 16, following protests over the amended Citizenship Act.
The petition was mentioned before a bench of Chief Justice D N Patel and Justice Rekha Palli by advocate, Rizwan, and the court allowed it to be listed on Thursday.
The petition by Rizwan alleges that Delhi Police “resorted to use of arbitrary, excessive, discriminatory and illegal force against students, more particularly female students, of Jamia Millia Islamia University, on the false pretext of restoring law and order”.
It further says that students and teachers were protesting in a peaceful manner against the amended Citizenship Act but the police disrupted it and used “unjustified, excessive, arbitrary and brute force” against them.
The plea was moved in the Delhi High Court after the Supreme Court on Tuesday had said that such petitions relating to violence be moved in high courts concerned.
Apart from seeking appointment of a fact-finding committee, comprising former judges of the Supreme Court and the high court, the PIL also wants no FIRs be lodged against students and no coercive steps be taken in complaints already registered, in connection with the violence, till the panel gives its report.
On Tuesday Delhi Police arrested ten people in connection with the violence perpetrated at Jamia out of which none were students of the University.
The petition has also sought a direction to the police to not to enter the university campus without requisite permission from the concerned authorities. On Sunday, the Delhi Police stormed the campus and video footage shows how the police tear gassed the University library and lathi-charged students studying in the library.
The petition also seeks directions to the Delhi government and police to allow students to enter the university, as well as compensation and proper medical treatment for those injured in the violence at the university.
Public buses were torched near University campus, at New Friends Colony near Jamia university during a demonstration against the amended Citizenship Act. Students were seriously injured in the incident with one of them losing an eyesight in one eye.
According to NDTV, Minahjuddin, 26, a final-year LLM student who was studying in the library’s MPhil section, said students were attacked by a group of 20-25 “fully armed” policemen in riot gear and wielding lathis. “They (the cops) burst in and started beating everyone with lathis… they hit me too. They hit me on my hand and fractured my finger and then on my eye. I tried to run away… I hid in the toilet, where I fell bleeding and unconscious”.