It started with a minor scuffle at lunch hour in the college canteen and ended with at least eight students getting beaten up brutally. The mainstream media has so far kept silent on the incident, save two reports in The Indian Express and Asian Age, leaving local newspapers in Kashmir to raise the issue of discrimination that young Kashmiris often face outside the valley.
On December 6, last Saturday, a student in first year and another in second year in Global Research Institution of Management and Technology in Nachroon district of Yamuna Nagar in Haryana got into a fight at about 1 pm at the college canteen.
The boy in second year, who happened to be a Kashmiri from Srinagar, apprehended the first-year student for breaking the queue and taking lunch out of turn. The argument escalated into a full-blown fight between the two boys but was soon settled, claims one of the eye-witnesses.
Support Newslaundry. Pay to keep news free and independent.
“However, within half an hour, the first-year student involved in the fight called a bunch of local goons who entered the college with rods and pistols and started beating up students,” says one of the students who got injured in the fight on condition of anonymity. He left the college the night the incident occurred fearing more attacks and is currently back in his hometown in Kashmir. “The argument was between two students and got settled but when the local goons entered the college, they started asking students whether they were Hindu or Muslim and started beating students who said they were Muslims,” he adds. The college has over 100 Kashmiri students enrolled with it.
Another student who was beaten up by the locals claims the college authorities did little to come to their help and they were chased out of the college. “We literally made a run to the local thana that was about 3 km away from the college. The police refused to file an FIR [first information report] and when they finally did, they just played it down as a minor fight among students in the college,” he says, adding that they have to return to the college on December 18 to take their exams and are scared to do so in the absence of police security. “We forced the police to escort us to the railway station, which they did, to catch a train back home that very night. All of us are scared to return. Instead of addressing our fear, we were accused of raising anti-India slogans when we did no such thing,” he says.
Details about the identity of the first-year boy who allegedly called the local goons are still sketchy. One of the boys who was injured in the fight says that he belonged to the Kishtwar region of Jammu, while others say he was local.
“This was just a minor fight between two students and both of them belong to the same state – Jammu and Kashmir. The college have identified the two boys between whom the fight first started as Aditya and Sohail.” says Chanchal Bhardwaj, Director of the college. Ved Prakash, Superintendent of Police, Yamuna Nagar district, too, says the incident was a nothing to worry about and that none of the locals were involved in the fight.
However, Newslaundry has examined the images sent by some of the boys who were attacked and judging from the injuries they have incurred, the incident, by no means, seems minor. Moreover, if the boys have doubts about their safety and want to file an FIR implicating the locals, the police and college authorities could do more than just brush aside the incident as minor.
Curiously, the mainstream media, which is quick to report on incidents pertaining to racial discrimination in the capital, have stayed mute on the incident. “None of the journalists we spoke to highlighted the incident,” says one of the boys, currently in Kashmir.
In Kashmir, however, the incident has been picked up by almost every local daily, including Greater Kashmir and Rising Kashmir. The incident has become an election issue, with Peoples Democratic Party President Mehbooba Mufti asking Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janta Party in Haryana to look into the issue and punish the attackers.
Even so, in the absence of adequate local reporting and media coverage, details of what exactly happened remain unclear. Given that the police and college administration have not been of much help, the boys who returned to Kashmir since the incident occurred were hoping the media would do its bit to highlight the issue.
For now, they don’t express much hope and are extremely reluctant to return to their college to take their exams. “But it is a question of our future so we will have to go back. We will ask the college authorities to allow us to shift to another college since we don’t feel safe there anymore,” says one of the injured boys.
(None of the students mentioned in the report have been named since they requested anonymity)