NEW DELHI: Delhi Police detained around half a dozen students who gathered at Jamia Millia Islamia University for Diwali celebrations on Wednesday, a day after a scuffle broke out between two groups of students during a similar event.
A senior police official said the detentions were made because the university administration, in view of the last night’s scuffle, had not granted permission for holding another Diwali event.
Approximately 30-40 students affiliated with ABVP, including those from other universities like JNU and DU, gathered outside the university to hold a Deep Mahotsav on Wednesday.
The police asked them to leave due to the lack of permission from the university.
“Some ABVP-affiliated students arrived outside the university, but the police repeatedly asked them to leave. However, the ABVP supporters were adamant about celebrating Diwali. In the meantime, the police used mild force to remove them from outside the university,” the official said.
The students did not have permission from the university to hold the event again on Wednesday, the officer added. On Tuesday night, a scuffle broke out between two groups of students during Diwali celebrations at Jamia Millia Islamia University leading to police personnel being deployed outside its gates as a precautionary measure, police officers said.
A police officer noted that no complaint had been received regarding the incident.
The Diwali event was organised by the Rashtriya Kala Manch (RKM). The ABVP planned to hold a ‘Deep Mahotsav’ again on Wednesday. Meanwhile, the Association of Minorities at Jamia criticised the incident and demanded that the university administration create a body to address the complaints of aggrieved students.
The university administration said there seems to be involvement of some outside elements in the Tuesday evening incident to disturb the peace on the campus.
“The students were given conditional permission by the administration to celebrate Diwali. Everything went on peacefully until 7:30 p.m. when some unidentified persons started raising slogans.
It shows that the outside elements deliberately created disturbance,” a university official said.
The university administration has filed a formal complaint in the Jamia Nagar Police Station against the unidentified persons. The accused are being identified through CCTV footage.
Personnel deployed
On Tuesday night, a scuffle broke out between two groups of students during Diwali celebrations at Jamia Millia Islamia University leading to police personnel being deployed outside its gates as a precautionary measure, police officers said. A police officer noted that no complaint had been received regarding the incident.The Diwali event was organised by the Rashtriya Kala Manch (RKM), a dimension of the RSS-backed Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) at the university. The ABVP planned to hold a ‘Deep Mahotsav’ again on Wednesday evening.