A case was registered on Monday against more than a dozen students of Banaras Hindu University (BHU) for allegedly assaulting and verbally abusing students, including women, who were organising a programne to mark one year of their protests against gender-based restrictions on the campus.
While ten students were named in the FIR lodged at the Lanka police station, around a dozen unknown outsiders have also been booked for offences under Sections 147, 354, 323, 504 and 506 of the IPC.
The charges include criminal intimidation and assaulting a woman with the intent to outrage her modesty.
While the organisers accused the ABVP, the student wing of the RSS-BJP, of disrupting the show in the FIR, the complainant student named “goons and and lumpen elements”.
As per the complaint, the accused students and outsiders disrupted the event at Malviya Gate on Sunday evening when the girls were holding nukkad nataks (street plays) and other cultural programmes to mark their struggle against hostel rules and for gender equality.
“When we protested [against them for using foul language and harassing us], they got aggressive and started assaulting those present,” read the complainant by one of the students.
‘Students threatened’
The students alleged that they were also threatened with dire consequences.
The persons named as accused were Abhay Pratap Singh, Anurag Singh, Abhishek Mishra, L.N Sharma, Shivam Dwivedi, Ashish Yadav, Samir Singh, Vishwajit Singh, Abhay Pratap and Abhay Singh.
Most of them were second year and third year B.A students.
Last September, girls of the BHU had led a campaign against the administration demanding a gender-just space and security for women students.
