Policemen at the spot of the clash at the Jalpaiguri Polytechnic Institute on Thursday. Picture by Biplab Basak

Jalpaiguri, July 26: A student of the Jalpaiguri Polytechnic College was stabbed last night on the campus allegedly by outsiders, who also injured five others with razors and knives.

One of the students was also hit with some heavy object on the chest, according to medical reports.

The principal of the polytechnic college, Santanu Nandan Moitra, has filed a general diary with Kotwali police station and a private security guard employed on the campus and a local youth from a slum barely 500m from the campus have been detained for questioning.

Past yesterday midnight, some second-year students of the polytechnic college, all of whom stay in the hostel, were chatting on a bridge that is on the campus. Police sources said the campus gate was not locked and around 10 outsiders, suspected to be youths from a nearby bustee, came to the bridge and abused the students.

Students have told the police that the outsiders were intoxicated and they were told to leave the campus. Around 1.30am, third-year students who overheard the commotion in their hostel rooms came to the bridge.

The argument escalated and some of the outsiders allegedly took out knives and razors and attacked the students. At 2.30am, the police from the Kotwali police station arrived at the spot and took the injured to the hospital.

Kamalesh Biswas, a 20-year-old third-year student of civil engineering, and Tanmay Dalal, in third-year mechanical engineering, were taken to a nursing home in Siliguri. Kamalesh is a resident of Basirhat and Tanmay is from Thakurnagar, both in North-24 Parganas.

Police said Kamalesh had been throwing up blood, and Tanmay’s stomach was slashed. He has undergone surgery in the Siliguri nursing home and is in the ICU. Kamlesh, probably hit with some heavy object, is in a stable condition.

Four second-year students — Joykrishna Sarkar, Sudipta Sarkar, Barun Roy and Bikash Dhawan — were released after first aid at the district hospital in Jalpaiguri. They had slash marks on their hands.

The students today alleged that the bridge had become a haunt of antisocials who regularly consumed alcohol till late at night on the bridge. “We wanted them to leave and instead of listening to us they attacked us,” a second-year student said.

Principal Moitra today partly blamed the students for the attack. “The students are not supposed to loiter at the bridge after 8pm and we are investigating why the hostel students were out at such late hours,” he said, adding that he had asked the police to “immediately arrest those who attacked the students”.

Moitra, however, did not lodge an FIR but filed a general diary complaint. Asked why he did not file an FIR, Moitra said he had done so keeping in mind the future of the students and the reputation of the college. “Some students told me they did not want to get involved in police investigations,” he said. If the students, who are mostly from outside Jalpaiguri, had agreed, the college would have filed an FIR, he said.

Sabuj Biswas, a third-year student and general secretary of the polytechnic students’ association, said students “had repeatedly told the authorities that the gate was not shut at night and outsiders entered our campus, but no one listened to us”.

The inspector-in-charge of Kotwali police station Tapan Alo Mitra said that the private guard had been detained and police had also detained a youth from the bustee for questioning. In Siliguri, a source in the nursing home said: “Tanmay, who suffered severe injuries in the abdomen, was operated upon this morning. He is unconscious and in the ICU.”

Doctors have done a CT scan on Kamalesh.The parents of both Tanmay and Kamalesh have left for Siliguri. “They are likely to reach here late tonight or early tomorrow morning,” Sabuj said.