MALAPPURAM: Raising their voice to protect their male friend, Shaheen Abdulla, when Delhi Police attacked him during the Jamia Millia Islamia University student protest against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) on Sunday, 22-year-olds Ayesha Renna from Malappuram and Ladeeda Farzana from Kannur stood out for their courage of conviction.
In a video, which went viral after the protest on Monday, the two girls were seen shouting at the police personnel and courageously asking them to not hurt their friend. They were also seen saving Shaheen from police batons by giving him human cover. Renna, second-year MA history student at the university,
told TNIE that the police attack on the students was brutal and a violation of human rights.
“We joined the sit-in protest around 2 pm on Sunday. We were at the back, so we didn’t know what had exactly happened in the front and made the peaceful protest turn violent. “The police unleashed a brutal attack on students around 5pm. First, they blocked our exit through a side with the barricades and attacked the students. Suddenly, we saw the students running to different sides screaming for help. We stood behind a tree. We saw many injured students and we helped many of them,” Renna explained.
For Renna and Farzana, it’s the right time to protest
When most of the students had left and the area came under the police control, the police fired teargas shells. “Farzana is suffering from asthma. Breathing the polluted air, she became ill. To make her comfortable, we tried to enter into a house along the street. Before getting into the residence, a group of policemen reached there and asked us to come out. They were targeting our friend Abdulla. They took our friend -- who was unarmed and ready to be taken into police custody -- forcibly to the street and beat him up brutally with batons,” Renna added.
She said the tension continued in Delhi on Monday too. “But the student community was asked to stay in safe places. We know police wanted to create violence using students. We are sure that the police had burnt the bus during the protest. Along with the police, some outsiders also attacked the students. They hid their faces with handkerchiefs,” Renna said.
For Renna and Farzana, it is the right time to fight against the Central government’s anti-minority agenda. Farzana said she did not fear the police or the Central government. “We fear only God. We don’t fear BJP and their agenda to divide the country,” Farzana said. “The BJP-led NDA government wants to implement their Hindutva agenda. All these years, we had stayed silent. If we continue to stay silent, the BJP-led government will come up with more anti-minority agendas,” Renna said.