An internal communication to Delhi police from the JNU administration has revealed that the force was granted permission to enter the campus as they “may deem fit”, contradicting the Vice Chancellor’s stand that he did not call police to the premises.
The letter dated February 11, a day ahead of the arrest of JNU students union President Kanhaiya Kumar, reads, “The Vice Chancellor has granted permission to the police force to enter JNU campus if need be and as you may deem fit.”
VC Jagdesh Kumar had on Monday claimed that he did not give a free hand to police to come on campus and pick up students.
“I never invited the police to enter the campus and pick our students. We only provided whatever cooperation was needed as per the law of land. We were bound to do so,” he had told reporters.
The letter, by varsity Registrar Bhupinder Zutshi to DCP South, was sent in response to the two communications sent by police to the university asking them to rectify the faulty CCTV cameras and “produce six students for joining the investigation of the case”.
Meanwhile, the students continued to boycott classes in protest against the alleged “mishandling” of the issue by university administration questioning the administration’s decision to allow the police “crackdown” on campus. They were joined by some teachers today who also demanded an explanation from the VC for the same.
When asked about the two contradicting stands, a senior varsity official said, “The letter was an assurance of cooperation as per the law of land. Understanding the concerns of the students about the security deployment on campus, we had raised the issue with police officials and there has been no deployment inside the campus since then”.
The varsity has also stated in the letter to police, “Security has been briefed to make use of present CCTV cameras and cell phone cameras to record any such incident. The repairing of non-functional CCTV cameras and laying of optical fibre cable for better connectivity of surveillance systems in progress.
Four Deans of JNU had also written to the VC last week to convey their protest against the manner in which students are being compared to “terrorists” and picked up from campus by policemen in plain clothes.
The clamour grew on campus demanding release of Kanhaiya who was arrested last week in connection with a case of sedition and criminal conspiracy registered over holding of the event at the varsity during which anti-India slogans were alleged to have been raised.