KOCHI:Tension prevailed at the Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit, Kalady, here on Wednesday morning following the arrest of 23 girl students who gheraoed the university registrar, finance officer, and syndicate sub-committee members demanding to allot closed hostel rooms for them. Following the arrest of research girl students, the irate student community took out protest marches demanding the release of the arrested students.
Sub Inspector P K Sreedharan, Kalady, said the students were arrested following the direction from University Registrar T P Ravindran. The university officials alerted the police that the senior officials at the varsity and syndicate sub-committee members were being held up by the students for hours and they sought police intervention to release the officials.
The police have forcibly removed the students from the place where they were squatting and recorded their arrest under various Sections of IPC for disrupting the duty of public servants, and locking them inside a room. Police said the arrested would be produced in the first class magistrate court, Aluva.
The girl students at the ladies hostel have been demanding better facilities for quite some time. Besides, a handful of rooms in the research scholars’ hostel were lying unoccupied for quite some time owing to various reasons. The student community had earlier demanded the authorities to allot the closed rooms to them and the university has begun steps to allot the rooms to them after completing the formalities. As part of this, the university had sought time till Monday to complete the formalities and invited them for a discussion on Wednesday. However, they stayed away from the conciliatory meet and gheraoed the university registrar, finance officer, and syndicate sub-committee members demanding to allot the rooms today itself. Following this, the university had to seek the police help to remove them, said University spokesperson.