Following the Akhilesh Yadav Government’s decision to drop the sedition charges against the 67 Kashmiri students of the Swami Vivekanand Subharti University (SVSU) in Meerut for allegedly cheering the Pakistan cricket team’s victory against India in the Asia cup, the students on Friday said they would not return to the campus unless the state government withdrew all the complaints and cases registered against them.
“All complaints and cases registered against the Kashmiri students should be withdrawn,” the expelled students told reporters here .Even though, they hailed the UP Government’s decision to drop the sedition charges, the students continued to maintain that they had not committed any major crime to be booked for sedition.
One of the students Aijaz Ahmad, who was among those thrown out by the varsity said,“We were watching the match and enjoying it. Majority of the students watching the match were local students. When India lost, the local students started shouting and hurled the choicest abuses on us. We rushed to our hostel rooms but the local students followed us and continued to hurl abuses on us.”
“They beat up two Kashmiri students and smashed the furniture in the hostel room. They also pelted stones at our rooms and continuously abused us,” he said. Another student, who was expelled, said instead of taking any action against the local students, the university authorities expelled them from the university.
“On Monday, policemen clad in anti-riot gear visited the campus. The university authorities told us to leave the place within 10 minutes. They threatened to forcibly evict us if we didn’t leave on our own. We told the warden that we didn’t have money. He told us that for our security we were being sent home and he would give us the money,” he said.
He said they were dropped at the local railway station without any money. “We spent the night there and boarded the train without a ticket. Somehow we reached Delhi and Jammu and from there we arranged money somehow to reach our respective places,” he said. According to the students, they don’t want to return to the University campus. “We are very scared and know that we would be targeted if we return there. We want migration. The J&K government should get us admitted to the Kashmir University since we won’t be safe in Meerut.”
“Ever since we got admission in the university, we have been facing mental trauma. They call us ‘terrorists’ and label us as ‘Pakistanis’. The Kashmiri students have been attacked twice --first in 2012 when two students were beaten up and then in 2013 when another student was roughed up and received more than six stitches,” they said.