Skip to main content

Sections imposed on attackers of Motihari professor "laughable": Letter to Nitish

In a letter to Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, the Jamia Teachers’ Solidarity Association (JTSA) has said that the "brutal assault" on Sanjay Kumar Yadav, assistant professor of sociology at the Central University, Motihari, on August 17 by a gang of around 20-25 goons, which dragged from his third floor flat into the street, preceded an atmosphere of intimidation and threats of violence against him.
According to JTSA, in his complaint to the police, Sanjay Kumar has clearly named the ring leaders of the mob. It also records the incessant harassment and threats issued by Sanjay Kumar Singh, Bureau Chief, Dainik Bhaskar. These threats pertained to his opposition to the vice chancellor against whom the university teachers had been agitating, as well as his Facebook posts, one of which invited the wrath of assailants.
Calling it Jungle Raj, JTSA wonders why the perpetrators and those who threatened him, which can be ascertained from a video, have not been arrested. "The sections under which the FIR has been filed are laughably light", it says, urging him to "see the video and decide whether the mob attacking Sanjay Kumar with rods was merely engaging in wrongful restraint (S. 341), and a simple case of causing hurt voluntarily (S. 323)."
Wondering what would qualify as an attempt to murder (non-bailable S. 307) in his opinion, JTSA says, "We are surprised at the sullen silence of the government on this murderous assault. We can only conclude that your conscience has made peace with the lynch mob."

Comments

TRENDING

Xi Jinping’s visit to USA: Recognition that China can't be contained?

By Vijay Prashad   President Xi Jinping’s forthcoming visit to the United States must be understood as more than an encounter between two heads of state, but it must be seen as an encounter between two possible futures. In one future, the United States imposes a spiral of confrontation against China. Trade disputes harden into economic warfare, then economic warfare intensifies into technological blockades, technological blockades produce military encirclement, and finally military encirclement creates incidents, and incidents the danger of becoming an unimaginable war.

Swaminarayan, untouchability and the 'we are not Hindu' argument

By Rajiv Shah   Following my blog on why the Eiffel Tower authorities should take all the blame for giving in to the Swaminarayan sadhus ’ bizarre demand to “invisibilise” women, including its female staff, during their visit to the internationally renowned Paris tourist centre on September 5, an interesting comment by one of the top academics drew my attention to something I vaguely knew about one of India’s most powerful and richest religious sects.

From margins to microphones: The rise of Dalit hip-hop in India

By Tersina Maria Toppo*  A protest does not always arrive as a slogan shouted from a street corner. Sometimes, it arrives on a beat. A microphone replaces the megaphone, a music video becomes a public square, and the smartphone becomes the space where a history once pushed to the margins is narrated, debated, and shared.