Chandigarh: Two Kashmiri students were allegedly assaulted in Haryana on their way to their university, following which three persons were arrested after Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti expressed outrage and urged her Haryana counterpart from the BJP to take action.
The students - Aftab Ahmed and Javed Iqbal Jagal, who study in the Central University of Haryana - were beaten up by a group on the way to the campus after offering Friday prayers at a mosque in Mahendargarh's Janta Pali village.
After Mehbooba, the PDP leader and an alliance partner of the BJP, tweeted, Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar responded that action had been taken and that the "guilty will be punished".
"Shocked and disturbed to hear reports of Kashmiri students being assaulted in Mahendargarh, Haryana. I urge the authorities to investigate and take strict action," Mehbooba tweeted, requesting Khattar to order a probe.
The Haryana government acted with alacrity and arrested three persons on Saturday morning.
"Guilty will be punished. Incident had started with a minor collision of motorcycle of the accused. 3 people have already been arrested and senior officer (the SP) is on the spot," Khattar tweeted back to Mehbooba.
The superintendent of police of Mahendargarh, Kamaldeep Goyal, said six of the accused had been identified on the basis of CCTV footage. "We are interrogating those arrested to find out why they attacked the students," Goyal said.
The police also said a verbal duel between the students and two locals after their motorcycles were involved in a minor accident sparked the assault. The students, however, said they were attacked "for no reason".
The district commissioner of Mahendargarh, Garima Mittal, said the students were being provided medical assistance and a probe was on to arrest the remaining culprits.
The assaulted students, Ahmed and Jagal, said a group began following them after they came out of the mosque and started their motorbike.
"There were around 15-20 people following us on motorbikes. They stopped us midway and started thrashing us for no reason. My friend managed to escape but the mob went on assaulting me," said Ahmed, an MSc student.
Jagal is pursuing a postgraduate degree in political science. A case has been registered under IPC Sections 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) and 506 (criminal intimidation).
National Conference leader Omar Abdullah, who is in the Opposition in Jammu and Kashmir, too, had expressed shock at the attack. "This is terrible and goes against the spirit of what the Prime Minister said from the ramparts of the Red Fort. I hope the authorities in Haryana quickly act against this violence," he said.
