Students of North-Eastern Hill University (NEHU) staged a protest today to condemn the entry of police personnel onto the university campus yesterday.
Carrying placards and black flags, the students criticised the state police for alleged harassment and intimidation. More than 100 police personnel were deployed to the campus yesterday, the same day that the NEHU Students’ Union president was arrested on suspicion of involvement in the alleged assault of an assistant professor in the Hindi Department last week.
NEHUSU general secretary T Kharsati claimed that police personnel were not in uniform and had given no prior notification that they would be deployed on campus. They even detained certain students and then released them due to mistaken identity, he alleged, further criticising the manner of the arrests and the way the police entered the campus.
Meanwhile, two teaching staff unions also came out against the presence of the police.
The Meghalaya Tribal Teachers Association (MeTTA) called the “large contingent of armed police” completely “unsolicited”.
In a press release today, MeTTA termed the police action as “disturbing” and a “blatant show of force,” stating that the deployment was made without consulting the university authorities or obtaining permission for entry. The association received frantic calls from students who were intimidated by the police presence, it added.
MeTTA views this incident as a machination of individuals and parties with vested interests aimed at vitiating the intellectual atmosphere of NEHU. The association warned that it will not tolerate such sinister plots and is prepared to deal with perpetrators swiftly and decisively.
Meanwhile, the NEHU Teachers’ Association (NEHUTA) said that the police presence was “unwarranted” and “uninvited”. Stationing police and CRPF personnel at various points on campus with enough gear to suggest that the deployment was long-term, was an “unprecedented imposition of high-handed policing on the academic and intellectual space of NEHU,” the association said.
NEHUTA also called it intimidating, an infringement of the sanctity of the academic space, potentially undemocratic and authoritarian and disproportionate. Police are not required unless there is “extreme breakdown of trust and confidence”.
“Providing security is a matter of discussion and consensus and not a matter of top-down imposition in a democratically organised academic space,” NEHUTA added. It concluded by saying that there “is no civil war, social unrest, gang war, communal clash, etc. within the campus of NEHU in Shillong that warrants the presence of a large numbers of Police and CRPF forces with heavy weaponry and gears against students who are armed with only pen and papers.”
