New Delhi: On the wee hours of February 13, 14 students who were protesting inside gate seven of Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) in Delhi were woken up while they were sleeping in front of the central canteen and forcibly carried by security guards of the institute under the guidance of the chief security officer of the university Syed Abdul Rasheed.
They were then handed over to the Delhi Police who were inside the campus near another gate. Later, the students were detained at different stations in Delhi for almost 12 hours without being informed of any grounds for detention and access to lawyers.
These 14 students were part of a sit-in protest which commenced on February 10 in front of the central canteen in the university. They were demanding the revoking of the disciplinary action against four students – Saurabh, Jyoti, Fuzail Shabbar and Niranjan – who were targeted for organising an event, remembrance day, on December 16 to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the police crackdown on the university campus during the protests against Citizenship (Amendment) Act-National Register of Citizens (CAA-NRC) on December 15, 2019.
“The guards came from three sides. While I was sleeping, I was picked up by my hair. I woke up to the male guards pulling my leg, they did not allow us to even wear our slippers. I was carried by a male and a female guard, my body exposed. I was screaming and asking them to at least let me fix my clothes. The more I was resisting, the more aggressive they became,” said U.R. Uthara, first year MA Sociology student who was among the 14 students who were detained by the police and later suspended from the university.
The events that led to the protest
The students sought permission from the proctor’s office to organise an event to mark the remembrance day on December 15. However, they were denied permission.
They organised the event the next day (December 16) after the classes at 5.30 pm, it started with a march, which commenced and ended at the central canteen. Next, students gave speeches highlighting the police brutality that happened in 2019 and threw light on the ongoing fascist attack on educational institutions. The event lasted for about an hour.
On December 17, one of the organisers of the event, Saurabh, a PhD scholar in the Department of Hindi and a member of All India Students Association (AISA) received a show cause notice from the proctor’s office, in which it was stated that the event had a “malafide political agenda” and it “paralyses academic spaces”.
However, Saurabh refuted the claims of the university administration.
“There is no malafide political agenda. The police crackdown on December 15, 2019 was a brutal attack on the entire university, we did not have any individual political agenda,” Saurabh told The Wire. Subsequently, he sent a 16-page letter to the administration on December 20 which they deemed “unsatisfactory”.
Following this, he received a notice on February 3, informing that a disciplinary committee would be formed to take action against him with no mention of a date for the same.
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“By then, we understood that we were being rusticated. They had completely butchered our rights as students,” said Jyoti, also a PhD scholar in the Department of Hindi and a member of Dayar-I-Shauq Students’ Charter (DISSC).
On February 10, a sit-in protest was organised in response to the action taken by the administration against Saurabh. A day prior to this (February 9), three other students – Jyoti, Fuzail, a first year B.Tech in computer engineering and member of DISSC and Niranjan, a fourth year law student and member of All India Revolutionary Students Organisation (AIRSO) — also received notices for disciplinary action.
“By this time, it was necessary to start the protest because there are many students being affected by these futile show-cause notices for gatherings. They demand that we take permission for every event and later reject every single one of them. That’s the situation of the campus now,” says Jyoti.
According to a memorandum released by the university registrar on August 29, 2022 “no meeting/gathering of students shall be allowed in any part of the campus without prior permission of the proctor, failing which disciplinary action shall be taken against the erring students.”
Another memorandum released on November 29 last year states that “no protests, dharnas, raising slogans against any constitutional dignitaries shall be allowed in any part of the university campus.” Along with this, there is a fine ranging up to Rs 50,000 for graffiti and postering in the campus premises.
Memorandum released by Jamia Millia Islamia authorities on November 29, 2024.
“When we sought permission to hold a study circle during the International Day for Solidarity for the Palestine People, the administration denied it. We had to resort to distributing pamphlets. Still we received calls asking us not to engage in such activities. There is no freedom to organise anything in the campus,” said Mishkat Tehrim, a first year student of MA Sociology, who was detained and later suspended.
The right to organise and gather is part of the six freedoms in Article 19. However, the brutal state repression and militarisation has curtailed the rights of the students in the university.
Along with this, the presence of police inside the campus raises serious questions about the safety of the students. “This is not the first time the police entered the campus. It happened in 2019 during the anti-CAA NRC protests. At this point, it is not very surprising the police were already inside the campus,” said Uthara.
‘Want our democratic space back’
“The students were taken from the central canteen area, harassed by the guards and were handed over to 50-60 police officers who were waiting inside gate four. They deliberately took us out through gate four because there are no cameras there,” Jyoti said, recalling the ordeal that they had to face on February 13.
The students were then shoved into three buses, and taken to three different stations – Kalkaji, Badarpur and Bawana.
“We had asked them to take us together. When they denied, we requested to at least put the female students together according to the protocol. This was also denied,” said Uthara, who was taken along with Mishkat, Sajahan Ali, both first year MA Sociology students and members of AISA, and another male student to the Kalkaji police station.
When other students and media reached Kalkaji station, they were not allowed to meet the detained individuals and their whereabouts were also not revealed.
At around 10 am, when more people gathered outside Kalkaji station, these students were taken to Fatehpur Beri station, in the pretext of taking them back to the campus. They were kept there till 4 pm in the evening, denied access to their lawyers even after multiple requests.
Along with this, the students were forced to sign documents – contents of which they couldn’t read – as they were threatened that they would not be released unless they signed it. “Our parents were also called to coerce us to sign those documents,” Mishkat said.
The students underlined that they were “treated like criminals, physically and verbally harassed by the police officers.” For instance, Habeeba, who was detained in the Badarpur police station, was allegedly slapped by a police officer for resisting to give her phone.
Another detainee, who did not wish to be named, has said that Islamophic slurs were directed at him, such as “yeh musalmaan log sirf dange fasaad karte hain (These Muslims create riots and fights everywhere).”
This wasn’t all. The administration has been using various measures to dismantle and disrupt the sit-in protests.
On the first night of the protest on February 10, authorities cut off the electricity in the campus, closed the washrooms and shut off the canteen area. Along with this, the vice chancellor, Mazhar Asif has allegedly denied holding any dialogue with the students.
On February 11, the parents of these protesting students were called by police officers and they instructed them to ask their children to withdraw from the protests. “This means the administration has shared our numbers with the police,” says Mishkat.
“The day before detaining [us], the Jamia Nagar police called my father asking him to coerce me to back out from the protests. He runs an auto-rickshaw in Kolkata, receiving multiple calls from the police threatening that an FIR would be booked against his son and he will be expelled from college was to frighten him and to intimidate me,” says Sajahan.
On February 12, the night before the detention, seven students including Sajahan received suspension letters for a clash which happened 800 metres away from the protest site.
Posters in Jamia Millia Islamia university campus. Photo: U.R. Uthara
Now, all the 17 students involved in the sit-in protests have been suspended. The reasons cited in one of the suspension letters include “leading an unruly and rowdy group of individuals to vandalise and deface the university’s property, disrupting the normal functioning of the campus, creating ruckus inside the campus, creating gross inconvenience to other students and defacing university property.”
“Suspension cannot happen in isolation,” says Uthara adding, “there is a due process for it. You should receive a show-cause notice. With the reply being unsatisfactory, a disciplinary committee will be looking into the issue and they will decide whether a suspension is necessary and if yes, the details of it.”
However, in this case none of that has happened. “Normally suspension lasts for two weeks. In the letters we received, no time is mentioned. They can suspend me again if I attempt to enter the campus after two weeks” she adds.
After the detained students were released on February 14, posters displaying their name, phone numbers, email IDs and political affiliations with the seal of the university were pasted inside gate seven, eight and 13 of the institute.
In an official statement, the university refuted this allegation saying that “some individuals and anti-social elements have been attempting to defame the image of the university and its students by spreading misleading, defamatory and malicious messages.”
The statement has put the blame on the protesting students for spreading the personal information and said it “condemns such brazen and irresponsible acts.”
Sonakshi Gupta, another student who got suspended has been receiving calls and messages from unknown numbers since her name and number were displayed on the posters.
“If the university is not responsible for this, how did their seal come in those posters?” asked Sajahan, in a press conference jointly organised by different student political parties of JMI on February 16 at the Press Club of India.
All the 17 students involved in the sit-in protests have been suspended in Jamia Millia Islamia. Photo: U.R. Uthara
Apart from revoking of the suspension, the students have put forward five other demands in the press conference, which includes “an immediate end to the issuance of show cause notices to students exercising their fundamental rights, revocation of all show-cause notices issued to students for raising their voices, repealing of the official memorandum dated August 29, 2022 and November 29, 2024, an end to the witch-hunt against students for expressing dissent and withdrawal of the notice penalising postering and graffiti on Jamia walls.”
The press conference organised by the suspended students saw large scale participation by students from various educational institutions and political organisations.
Underlining how “democratic spaces” are shrinking in university campuses, Jyoti pointed out, “We want our democratic spaces back. If the administration has a problem with the political culture of the university, they can resign. Or else they need to ensure the freedom and safety of the students.”
As students from various departments of the university have released solidarity statements in support of the suspended students, the classes in JMI were also boycotted on February 17. However, the administration has been actively working to suppress any kind of resistance and voices in support of the suspended students.
“The registrar, Mehtab Alam Rizvi has said that if somebody boycotts classes on the [February] 17th, the entire class would be suspended. What kind of authoritarianism is this,” asks Jyothi.
The boycott, however, saw huge participation from students with classrooms remaining empty. On the same day, the students submitted a memorandum to the dean of student welfare demanding the immediate revoking of all suspension letters with an ultimatum of 48 hours.
Hajara Najeeb is a researcher based in Delhi.
