In another major security lapse, several post-graduate students of Utkal University were assaulted on Tuesday night by outsiders.
Eight students were injured when around 25 masked outsiders entered the hostel premises reportedly at around 2.30 am and went on a rampage.
Six of the eight students have been hospitalised due to serious injuries. Varsity student union president Tanmay Swain, supposedly the main target, is among the hospitalised.
The outsiders burnt four motorcycles parked on the hostel premises.
Basing on an FIR filed by the students with the Saheed Nagar police station, four youths were arrested.
The attackers appeared to have pre-planned the whole thing and went about the attack by first closing the doors of the nearby rooms of the hit list.
“They closed the doors of the adjacent rooms so that no one could stop them,” said Bismay Stalin, who is one of the eyewitnesses to the incident.
Recently, the campus had witnessed unrest following a clash between the university students and outsiders.
“They had brought petrol along with them. It was premeditated and we could not save ourselves since they attacked in the small hours and had locked up adjacent rooms,” added Stalin. The students claimed that two of their folk aided the outsiders in the attack.
This is the second time in the last three months that outsiders have entered the university campus freely and resorted to violence, with no major step being taken by university officials to prevent recurrence of such incidents.
There have been demands by the students after the last attack to beef up the security, but nothing has been done so far.
The senior university officials have admitted that the present guards stationed at the university gates are not capable enough to provide security to the university students.
“We have decided to upgrade the security provided at the gates and on the campus. Outsiders entering the campus and assaulting the students are not acceptable,” said a university official.