Villagers pelt stones on NIT students. Picture by Bhola Prasad

Jamshedpur, March 27: A row over a road snowballed on the campus of the National Institute of Technology in Adityapur with students and villagers fighting a pitched battle this morning.

At least four persons, including a lensman of a local news channel and a policeman, sustained injuries as arrows, stones and other missiles flew across the campus, on the outskirts of the city.

The students and the people residing in the neighbouring areas have been at loggerheads over the use of a road which cuts through the campus.

The students have long been pressing for the campus to be declared a prohibited area to stop the villagers from using the road. The villagers, on the other hand, argued that they had been using the road even before the institute had been set up.

An auto-rickshaw carrying a pregnant woman to a hospital was also stopped by the agitating students. The vehicle was allowed to go only after senior police officers intervened.

Police have registered a case based on the statement of one Ravi Jha against NIT director G. Panda, former acting director of the institute Akhileshwar Mishra, hostel warden Prof. Shailendra Kumar and 200 NIT students for allegedly abetting violence.

Tension has been simmering on the campus since Saturday night when a motorcyclist on his way back to the adjacent Aasangi village in Seraikela-Kharsawan district hit a student who was walking down the road.

The student received head injuries and has been admitted to a local hospital.

Irate students blocked the road, the only way to the village, today. As news spread, the villagers, armed with traditional weapons, including bows and arrows, protested the blockade, prompting retaliation from the students who hurled brickbats. This led to a free-for-all with both sides pelting stones.

Warden Kumar defended the students. ?Boys are often assaulted by outsiders. Moreover, as outsiders were responsible for Saturday?s mishap, the students have been demanding restriction on their movement through the campus,? he said.

However, the people of Ashingi, Krishnapur and Bundi villages said they were the original residents of the locality and had been using the road, which has now been encircled by the NIT authorities, decades before the institute was set up in 1964. ?How can we stop using the road when we have no other alternative?? they said.

Seraikela-Kharsawan deputy commissioner N.P. Singh visited the campus in the evening and ordered the authorities to get the hostels vacated immediately.

?Though the situation at NIT is under control, it was necessary that the students vacate their hostel for sometime until normality is restored,? he said.

Singh said though the road technically belonged to the NIT, the villagers? claim was equally legitimate as no alternative arrangement has been made for them.