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Murder most vile

The death of an Ujjain college professor after he was brutally set upon by a group of students suspected to be from the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad is a grim reminder that in Bharatiya Janata Party-run Madhya Pradesh, elements of the Sangh Parivar are a law unto themselves. The assault, in which two other teachers were seriously injured, took place in the presence of not just students and teachers gathered to elect college union office-bearers but police pickets posted on the campus. The mob attack followed a decision by the college authorities to suspend the election on grounds of irregularity. The potentially explosive situation — with teachers and students holding protest marches and calling for a city bandh and so forth — demanded swift official action. Yet the Government's initial response was to insist that the 62-year-old professor had died of a cardiac arrest. It was only after the post-mortem report showed that his death was due to injuries sustained in the attack that the State police formally charged the "unidentified" assailants with murder. To compound the outrage in the academic community, the Government has since passed on the case to the State CID — the all-too-familiar escape route regimes on the defensive take.

Why did the State police not intervene to stop the aggression? And why did it not identify and arrest the culprits immediately? After all, the two colleagues of Professor Sabharwal, who were injured in the attack, were available as key witnesses. The belated surrender of two ABVP office-bearers on Wednesday owed not to any effort by the Government but to public pressure brought about by repeated telecast of the campus violence by NDTV. Intriguingly, within hours of the surrender, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan was on air claiming that the professor died by accident and was not killed. How this will influence the investigating agencies is anybody's guess. Indeed, just how fair and law-abiding the State Government is is reflected in the tall story that the police could find no eyewitnesses to a murder committed in full view of the college campus and recorded on camera. This horrific incident is by no means the first of its kind. Citing State Home Ministry files, a daily newspaper reported recently that since the BJP came to power in the State, there have been at least three dozen instances of ruling party politicians beating up government officials. The Christian community has been at the receiving end of communal thuggery. In Bhopal, early this year, activists alleged to belong to the Bajrang Dal thrashed worshippers, including 18 schoolchildren, at a prayer meeting. On June 5, a Bajrang Dal functionary abused a member of the State Minority Commission representing the Christian community, even as she was addressing a press conference to highlight serious human rights violations against two women converts. In the 2003 Assembly election, the BJP counted the teaching community among its supporters. It is unlikely to be able to bank on it again.

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