Five students have been expelled and booked for allegedly assaulting a 22-year-old postgraduate student from Assam at a hostel of Indira Gandhi National Tribal University (IGNTU) in Amarkantak, located in Madhya Pradesh’s Anuppur district, an official said.
An FIR was registered against the five accused shortly before midnight on Wednesday following a complaint by Hiros Jyoti Das, a postgraduate economics student from Assam studying at IGNTU, Anuppur Sub-Divisional Officer of Police Naveen Tiwari told PTI.
The accused students were booked under sections 115(2) (voluntarily causing hurt), 296 (obscene acts and words), 351(3) (criminal intimidation) and 3(5) (common intention) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), he said on Thursday.
The incident comes amid heightened concern following the recent death of Anjel Chakma, a student from Tripura, in Dehradun, Uttarakhand, last month. Chakma’s death sparked nationwide outrage and renewed calls for action and legislation against hate crimes targeting students from the Northeast.
“The university informed us that the five students were expelled by the disciplinary committee from the university a day earlier. We registered the FIR after receiving a complaint from Das. As per Das, when he was returning to his hostel room from the washroom, the accused allegedly asked him where he was from and what he was doing at the university. They then assaulted him around 4 pm on Tuesday," the official said.
According to the police, the victim told them that he has been studying at the university for the past three years. He claimed to have sustained injuries to his eyes, lips, nose and temples after being hit with a bracelet, the official added.
“He has named Anurag Pande, Jatin Singh, Rajnish Tripathi, Vishal Yadav and Utkarsh Singh in his complaint,” he said.
When asked whether racial slurs were used during the incident, Tiwari said the matter was under investigation.
“The motive behind the assault would be clear after questioning the students. Das’ medico-legal certificate report is awaited," Tiwari added.
Attempts to contact Das and IGNTU Registrar Professor NS Hari Narayana Moorthy were unsuccessful. Prof Moorthy did not respond to WhatsApp calls and messages.
Meanwhile, the Madhya Pradesh Congress criticised the ruling BJP over the incident. In a statement, Leader of the Opposition in the state Assembly Umang Singhar alleged that some unruly students at the IGNTU hostel made racist remarks against Das and assaulted him when he objected.
Singhar further alleged that youths linked to the ruling party consume drugs on the campus and assault students, while the university administration takes only token action under the guise of disciplinary proceedings.
He claimed that the university, established to impart higher education, had been turned into a hub of the BJP and the RSS, with irregularities and incidents repeatedly surfacing.
The Congress and the RSS-affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Vidhyarthi Parishad (ABVP), in separate statements, collectively deplored the situation on the IGNTU campus, alleging it had become a haven for “anti-social elements, drunkards and junkies”.
The ABVP submitted a memorandum to the Anuppur Superintendent of Police protesting the assault. ABVP activists claimed that an atmosphere of fear was gradually building up at the university due to the growing presence of anti-social elements, leaving students feeling unsafe.
The entry of such elements into the campus has led to increased consumption of narcotic substances, resulting in frequent serious incidents, it alleged.
“If things don’t improve at the central university in two weeks, we will launch an agitation,” Anuppur district ABVP organising secretary Shivendra Chaturvedi told PTI.
In the earlier incident in Dehradun, Anjel Chakma (24), a final-year MBA student from Tripura, was allegedly attacked with a knife by some youths at a private university on December 9. He died on December 26 after undergoing treatment for 17 days.
