The recent happenings in KIIT University have not only raised serious questions on the conduct of the institution’s authorities but also sullied the image of Odisha internationally.
The unsympathetic manner in which the varsity handled the suicide case of a Nepali student and the resultant protests by fellow students have sparked massive outrage nationally and drawn intervention of the Himalayan nation’s top leadership from its prime minister to foreign minister.
While the university is understandably under fire, the role of the state government, particularly its police in dealing with an extremely delicate situation involving students of a foreign country which also happens to be a friendly neighbour of India cannot be absolved.
After the girl student’s death by suicide, the accused – a batchmate of the victim - was arrested from Bhubaneswar airport on Sunday evening. But student protests had flared up on the campus and the streets in the area of the capital city and continued through the night.
The police was in the thick of things all along as a law and order situation had emerged, yet it chose to be a mute spectator. It is hard to believe the police administration was not aware when the university issued a notice the next morning declaring the institution closed sine die only for students from Nepal. The varsity then began ferrying the Nepali students, who number in hundreds, by buses to different railway stations in and around Bhubaneswar and dropped them there.
This surprisingly did not catch the attention of the state government despite widespread reporting in the media with disturbing visuals on the misery of the evicted students. That the intelligence wing of state police had no information of such activity is unimaginable.
As usual, the police and the administration, which should have intervened to diffuse the situation chose to stay aloof. It was not until the incident turned into a diplomatic issue with Nepal Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli stepping in to intervene that there was a statement from the government, and damage control exercise was set into motion.
However, the blame should lie more on the police for allowing the situation to spiral to the extent it has.
For Infocity police station, under whose jurisdiction all this happened, it might have been another case of suicide followed by protests, and expecting the local officers to comprehend the enormity of the situation would amount to asking too much of them.
But, the oversight of senior officers of state police as well as Commissionerate Police in such a grave issue is just appalling, as it involved India’s and Odisha’s international relations.
The Nepal Ministry of Education, Science and Technology’s caution that it would be constrained to issue NOCs to its students wishing to study in Odisha if the current situation was not resolved in a ‘justifiable and legal way’ should be a matter of concern for Odisha government, thanks to the abdication of responsibility, poor intelligence and tardy response of the state police.
Not so long ago, the assault and humiliation of an Army officer and his fiancée at a police station had brought disrepute to the state.
The Mohan Charan Majhi government, which pulled out all stops to salvage the situation, has constituted a high-power committee to investigate into the matter. Hopefully, the panel will also look into the commission and omission of the police which was in position to arrest the damage but chose to look the other way.