JNU Says FIR Lodged After Students Raise Slogans; Vows ‘Strictest Action’
New Delhi: The Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) said Tuesday evening it had lodged an FIR with the Delhi police against students who it alleges raised slogans against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah on campus.
Among the slogans the students can be heard shouting in a video recording of the protest was a metaphorical reference to the “burial” – i.e. eventual defeat – of Modi, Shah and their rule: ‘Modi Raj ki qabr khudegi JNU ki dharti par’ and ‘Modi-Shah ki qabr khudegi JNU ke dharti par’, which translate to ‘JNU will one day bury Modi’s Rule’ and ‘Modi-Shah’.
The university administration said in a post on X that it would discipline its students if they were found to have raised the slogans. Promising the “strictest action”, the university said that “students involved in this incident will also face disciplinary measures including immediate suspension, expulsion and permanent debarment from the University”.
The JNU Student Union (JNUSU) has responded in a statement, cited by PTI, in which it says that the programme, organised on Monday, was a vigil to “keep the memory of the 2020 attacks on JNU alive”.
On the night of January 5 that year, masked and armed individuals had beaten and injured students and teachers on the JNU campus and vandalised university properties.
The Wire had reported after the incident that 31 students, two teachers and two security staff members had suffered major or minor injuries. Police are yet to make any arrests in the case.
On Tuesday, JNUSU responded to media coverage of the latest allegations as mislabelling a students’ event. “...rather than uphold journalistic ethics and speak truth to power, a section of the media has resorted to mischaracterising the vigil to deflect from real questions,” the student union reportedly told PTI.
The JNU administration had written to the police asking an FIR be filed against students on Tuesday.
According to JNU's chief security officer Naveen Yadav, some students raised slogans at a JNUSU programme held on Monday night whose “nature and tone”, he said, “changed significantly” over time. He also noted the Supreme Court's denial of bail to JNU students Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam in the Delhi riots ‘larger conspiracy’ case.
Khalid and Imam are in pretrial detention since 2020 in connection with an alleged ‘larger conspiracy’ behind the violence in northeast Delhi in February the same year. They were denied bail by the Supreme Court on Monday, following a series of lower courts that also denied them bail.
The university's registrar said in a statement on Tuesday that the administration had “taken very serious cognisance” of videos of the slogans, calling it ‘inconsistent with democratic dissent’ and against the university’s Code of Conduct. The registrar, Ravikesh, also alleged that the slogans could disturb public order, campus harmony and the “safety and security environment of the University and the Nation [sic]”.
Note: This report has been updated since publication with details of the slogans.
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