Bhagalpur: A mob comprising over 200 students from Bihar College of Engineering (BCE) in Bhagalpur on Thursday night stormed the college principal's official residence and ransacked it.
Principal Nirmal Kumar escaped unscathed but has decided to quit. The college has been shut till September 14 and hostel inmates asked to vacate their rooms immediately. Principal secretary in the department of science and technology, Harjot Kaur Bamhrah, who set off from Patna after receiving Prof Nirmal Kumar's SOS, was expected in Bhagalpur by the evening.
Nirmal had earlier sought police help to evacuate the hostel superintendent's room, captured illegally by a final year student.
The situation on the campus was tense on Friday. District magistrate Pranav Kumar, senior superintendent of police (SSP) Ashish Bharati and sub-divisional officer Ashish Narayan have been camping at the college with forces. Officials interacted with the students who told them they do not like Prof Nirmal, pointing out several flaws in him.
Around 10pm on Thursday, over 200 students attacked Prof Nirmal's official quarters on the campus. "Over 200 students wanted to kill me," Prof Nirmal complained before the police.
"I somehow managed to flee. The mob entered the quarters and destroyed property worth not less than Rs 2.5 lakh, besides looting valuable articles and Rs 50,000 in cash. The students targeted me because I had requested police (Zero Mile police station) to take action against Ramesh Kumar, a final-year computer science student, who, on August 21, broke open the hostel superintendent's room and began staying there illegally. I requested the police to vacate the room after the hostel superintendent sent a written complaint. On Thursday evening, the police tried to convince Ramesh to vacate the room. But Ramesh made a mob attack my residence."
In an SOS over WhatsApp to Bamhrah, Prof Nirmal said it was not possible for him to continue. "The principal secretary is arriving this evening. I will tender my resignation," Prof Nirmal told The Telegraph at his chamber on Friday.
"My wisdom level is totally collapsed...students want freedom in every bad temptation like ragging, attendance monitoring, giving assignments, making presentation in the classroom... The situation is unpleasant and causing much unhappiness. Now I can't function...," Prof Nirmal said in his message.
SSP Bharati said the forces and magistrate have been deputed at the college and the police has started conducting raids to nab those behind Thursday night's incident as per FIRs registered by the college authorities. "Today, we had long interactions with the students and many of them said they were named before the police though they were not involved in Thursday night's incident," SSP Bharati said. "I assured them that the police would not falsely implicate any innocent person."
