Aligarh’s BJP Yuva Morcha president, Mukesh Singh Lodhi had filed a complaint with the police against the students of AMU, who took out a protest march in support of “stone pelters” who were killed in a security operation in Pulwama, Jammu and Kashmir on Saturday.
On December 16, it was reported that an Army officer and three terrorists were killed in a fierce gunbattle. Seven stone pelters were also killed in the crossfire while they were trying to protect the terrorists, trying to give them a safe passage by pelting stones at the security personnel during the encounter in Pulwama district in Jammu and Kashmir.
Several media houses had referred to these dangerous ‘stone pelters’ as ‘civilians’, reflecting the Indian Army in a bad light. So much so that after the incident, the National Conference (NC) president Farooq Abdullah had commented that the Army should have used water cannons or tear gas instead of bullets, hinting that the army was responsible for the killing of seven innocent ‘civilians’, whereas later videos emerged on social media, showing that it was the soldiers who were actually attacked by ‘stone pelters’ and the army retaliated in self-defence.
On December 15, students of the Aligarh Muslim University took out a protest march on the university campus to condemn the killing of the seven stone pelters.
In his complaint filed with the district SSP Ajay K Sahni, Lodhi demanded that an FIR is lodged against the students, who were led by the President of AMU Students’ Union Salman Imtiaz and their Secretary, Huzaifa Aamir. He further demanded the arrest of all the students involved in the act.
The BJP youth wing president lambasted at the AMU students by saying that their support for the ‘stone pelters’ only displayed their ‘terrorist mentality’.
Aligarh SSP Ajay K Sahni said that he has written a letter to AMU vice-chancellor and requested him to through light on the particular incident.
The Aligarh Muslim University, one of the oldest institutions in the country, has many times in the past spearheaded several controversies. Earlier this year the university was in the news for hanging partition architect Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s portrait in the students’ union office.
Lately, the AMU had again stirred controversy with its administration being accused of showing insensitivity towards the Hindu students on its campus. They allegedly used the same oil for cooking vegetarian food in which non-vegetarian food was being made.
Similarly, the University had again hogged the limelight when one of its students was found to have joined the terror organisation Hizb-ul-Mujahideen.
The AMU students’ union had in the past grabbed public attention when they had objected to the University Administration’s invite to President Ramnath Kovind for the convocation ceremony.
