Students of BIT, Sindri, wait at Dhanbad railway station to board trains to go home. Picture by Gautam Dey

Dhanbad, Sept. 18: Birsa Institute of Technology, Sindri, was today closed indefinitely for certain batches after a tussle between CRPF personnel and students blew into a fight between pupils.

After nearly six hours of skirmish on the BIT campus, the college was closed for students of second, third and fourth years — those responsible for the situation. Most of the 2,000-odd students, some of them injured, evacuated the campus by midday and left for their respective homes.

College authorities said the closure was a precautionary measure taken to avoid aggravation of the anarchy that was reigning the campus from Monday.

As director of the BIT S.K. Singh is not in town, director in-charge A.K.S. Choudhry issued the emergency order with immediate effect.

The chaos was an after math of a brawl between CRPF jawans and some second-year boys. Around 9pm yesterday, about six second and third-year students returning from tuition were stopped by some jawans at the trekker stand in Saharpura, about half a kilometre from the college. The techies were taken to the camp of 190 battalion and badly beaten.

A CRPF jawan said the assault was an act of retribution. “The boys had beaten a sweeper of our battalion on Sunday when he was working on their campus. The worker was so badly injured that he was referred from our CRPF hospital to the Dhanbad Pataliputra Medical College and Hospital,” said a jawan, justifying the assault.

The victimised students stormed the nearby Gaushala police outpost and demanded the immediate suspension of the CRPF personnel involved in the incident. They also called the deputy inspector-general (DIG).

The students lodged a FIR against unnamed CRPF personnel while the CRPF has instituted an FIR against unnamed BIT students, Sindri deputy superintendent of police Nagendra Choudhry said.

The fight became intra-college when the police asked for some time to investigate and the students refused.

When fourth-year students intervened to ask the agitated juniors to grant time to the police, the latter group became infuriated and hurled abuses at the seniors. This stirred the hornet’s nest.

Around 2.25am, a huge group of fourth-year students raided the hostel of third-year pupils and assaulted them. A riot followed and police intervention could not bring the situation to normalcy.

Meanwhile, some third-year students lodged a complaint against their seniors at the police station.

A fourth-year student said their juniors do not respect them. He said the stop-ragging drive has led to this lack of respect for seniors.