Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Simmering discontentment among engineering students

K. Manikandan, who visited areas of students' unrest in the past week, says the police action did not seem fair.

AT THE CROOS ROADS: Students of Sathyabama Deemed University assemble at the entrance after the college declared a week's closure following students' unrest over AICTE approval for their courses . — Photo : N. Sridharan

The trail of damage left behind in some of the deemed universities in and around Chennai due to the sudden outburst of student unrest is an eye opener to academicians and educationists.

It was probably the first time that students of professional courses in unaided colleges indulged in such violence in this region.

Normally, professional college students take their studies seriously. But at the scene of violence they were accused of involving in vandalism.

The row over getting approval of the All India Council for Technical Education to their institutions sparked the trouble. It began as peaceful demonstrations by students but ended up in violence.

Students complain that the police also behavedbadly with them, especially during the incidents at SRM Deemed University in Kattankulathur. They had assembled peacefully, but were subject to an alleged assault from "miscreants." And, the police were summoned on the ground that they had started the problem, students recalled, adding how the police did not act when a woman mediaperson was attacked.

The students accuse the officers of the Kancheepuram district police of involvement in the attack on the reporter and her camera crew, seizure of and damage to the camera.

The tapes were confiscated. Student leaders said they were shocked by the behaviour.

"It is as if the police cannot stand student dissent, if one goes by the way the latter group was thrashed and eight of them arrested on charges of rioting with deadly weapons," said G. Selva, State Secretary, Students' Federation of India - Tamil Nadu.

Students who came out on bail claimed they were mere onlookers and the police were yet to trace the "real criminals."

However, the Kancheepuram Superintendent of Police, M. Amalraj, had at the spot told reporters that the boys were picked up only after the police themselves saw the students "performing the damage."

Charging the police with bias, student bodies such as Students Federation of India have called for a fair probe into rights violations against the students at SRM Deemed University in the police action.

At the Sathyabhama Deemed University the next day, it was the police who were at the receiving end, though not literally.

As a posse of policemen came to the campus, they were simply overwhelmed by the number of students who asked policemen to enter at their own risk.

And, in the earlier incidents at Bharath Institute of Higher Education and Research near Tambaram, policemen were seen harassing students who were at tea shops.

Groups of students of engineering colleges are members of the Friends of Police organisation in many areas of the suburbs and the city, doing night patrolling with their friends and joint rounds with the policemen after finishing their daily classes. Such measures are sure to get a beating if incidents of violence are unleashed by the police on the students, say some.

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