A day after a group of people holding the flag of the Trinamool Congress students wing vandalised Presidency University here, students, teachers and alumni of the University took to the streets in protest.
Though the Trinamool leadership, including Education Minister Bratya Basu, continues to claim that the party supporters were not involved in the incident, television footage aired by local channels showed that Partha Basu, a Trinamool Councillor, was present outside the University gate before the incident.
The West Bengal Human Rights Commission has directed the City Police Commissioner to enquire into the vandalism at the University and submit a report in two weeks. It also initiated an independent probe into the entire incident by the former principal of the institution, Amal Mukherjee.
Governor M.K. Narayanan, who is also the Chancellor of the 195-year-old institution, condemned the incident saying, “Those who ransacked [the institution] should be treated as criminals.”
“We are not going to take things lying down,” Vice-Chancellor Malabika Sarkar said, adding “the University and its students have become soft target for hooligans.”
Asked about the claims of Trinamool leaders that those responsible for the attack were not associated with the party, Prof. Sarkar said that must be decided by investigations, but maintained that those who attacked the institution in no way appeared to be students.
She sent a letter to Mr. Narayanan narrating the entire episode and asked what steps the University should take to prevent recurrence of such incidents.
Two persons have been arrested in connection with Wednesday’s violence.
A group of people carrying flags of the Trinamool student wing broke open the lock of the University main gate and attacked the 100-year-old Baker laboratory in the Physics department, where renowned scientists like Jagadish Chandra Bose and Satyendra Nath Bose had worked.
The students observed a strike on Thursday, tied bands over their mouth and marched along with teachers and alumni demanding that those responsible for the incident be apprehended.
Condemning the attack, Magsaysay award winning writer Mahasweta Devi said student politics be “kept apart” from the general political scenario.
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