BENGALURU: While expressing concern for the students as the Azim Premji University (APU) has filed an FIR against them, academicians and civil society members have written an open letter to Azim Premji University’s registrar on Wednesday.
They have urged the registrar to publicly affirm that student expression within constitutional bounds will not be subject to criminalisation and to use all available legal and institutional avenues to close the FIR.
They have also asked the registrar to recommit to internal, non-carceral mechanisms for addressing procedural or administrative issue concerns on the campus. On February 24, ABVP activists attacked students and security guards and vandalised the property of APU over a discussion on Kunan Poshpora event in Kashmir in 1991. It was organised in the APU campus by the SPARK Reading Circle.
“Criminal law is an instrument of last resort. It must not be used to regulate student expression, manage reputational anxiety, appease violent disruption by external political actors.
Escalating a matter of campus governance into an FIR exposes students to the coercive machinery of the carceral state and risks damaging the culture of trust and intellectual freedom essential to academic life.
The continued pendency of a criminal case against students leaves them under the shadow of potential prosecution and sustains a climate of uncertainty,” the letter read.