Patna, Sept. 19: National Institute of Technology (NIT), the premier engineering college of the state, today turned into a battlefield as two groups of students clashed with one other over an alleged eve-teasing incident a few days ago.

The clash erupted on the campus after Sidhant Dutta, an expelled student, along with his friends beat up Ashish Kumar, a student of the institute. Sources said both Ashish and Sidhant were having an affair with a girl from the institute and the clash is being seen as a fallout of the affairs.

Today morning, Sidhant reached the campus and threatened Ashish, asking him to keep away from the girl, else be ready to face consequences. Anil Kumar, a student of the institute, said: “As we saw Sidhant and his friends threatening Ashish, we ran to his rescue.” NIT students later caught hold of Sidhant and his friends and started assaulting him. The students took Sidhant to Pirbhore police station and demanded that the cops register a complaint against Sidhant.

However, the police tried to pacify the students, saying they would register a complaint against Sidhant but the students demanded that the police register the complaint in their presence.

They left the police station only after city superintendent of police (central) Shivdeep Lande assured them of the same. Lande told The Telegraph: “I have asked Pirbhore police to register a complaint.” Lande added that around a year back, the NIT administration had expelled Sidhant, as he had taken admission in the college by submitting fake documents. Though expelled, Sidhant, who hails from Uttarakhand, has been living in the state capital and has been involved in a series of incidents on the NIT campus.

Anil said Sidhant, after being expelled from the institute, had been regularly threatening NIT students and been involved in incidents of eve-teasing. Anil said: “Sidhant has beaten up NIT students several times on some pretext or the other and students are afraid of him.”

The NIT administration, however, refused to comment anything on the issue.

Meanwhile, in another development, the dharna of NIT’s architecture branch entered its 22nd day. The students today met a member of the NIT board of governors who assured them that the issue of re-registration of the architecture branch with the council of architecture was discussed at the council of architecture general council meeting at Nagpur on September 16.