7 months after an FIR was registered against 14 students from Hyderabad Central University (HCU) for protesting against Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and National Population Register (NPR), just one student, Manikanta, member of Bahujan Students’ Front (BSF) received a notice on 10th October to appear at a Hyderabad police station on 6th October. Which is when the rest of the 13 students as well became aware of the FIR registered against them.
On 21st February, a joint protest against CAA-NRC-NPR was held by MANUU Students’ Union and HCU Coordination Committee, where student organisations such as the NSUI (National Students’ Union of India), MSF (Muslim Students’ Federation), BSF and other smaller student groups walked from a coffee shop a 100mtrs away from Maulana Azad National Urdu University (MANUU) into the campus for which an FIR has been registered on the same date against 14 students from HCU university by Cyberabad Police of Raidurgam station.
The notice which was served to Manikanta as per section 41 (police may arrest without warrant) of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) comes as a shocker to the students, firstly because it came 7 months after the FIR has been registered, secondly as they all hail from different states and travelling during a pandemic to report at the police station is difficult for everybody.
All the 14 students have been booked under 143 (unlawful assembly ), 188 (disobedience to public servants order) read with 34 (Acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention) of the Indian Penal Code.
The complaint was made by the Sub-Inspector of Police Raidurgam, who was performing duties at MANUU at the time of the joint protest. The FIR states
“Brief facts of the case are that on 21.02.2020 at about 18:15 hours the complainant has while performing duties at MANUU university meantime he noticed that, about 20 to 30 students of Hyderabad Central University(HCU) were illegally gathered at Coffee day shop and conducted rally from Coffee day shop to inside of MANUU University with showing placard, slogans against the central government, and gave lectured there as too provocative the students to break tranquillity at the university, the said rally was conducted without taking permission from either MANNU University authority or from Police, on enquire he came to know names of HCU student i.e. 1) Sourab Kumar, 2)Hadif, 3)Ashiquel Rasool, 4)Thahir Jamal, 5)Manikanta, 6)Amol Jose, 7)Akash Rathore, 8)Sneha Gorge, 9)Basker Sarkar, 10)Ananthu Rajagopal, 11)Mansi Chowdary, 12) Jehad, 13) Akram, 14) Sonal and others. Hence the requests necessary action against the accused persons who have conducted a rally without permission and trying to break tranquillity at the university.”
Responding to the content of the FIR, Umar Faruq, MANUU Students’ Union President says, “We had taken permission from the college authorities for the protest, it’s a baseless allegation by local police. The college authorities allowed us to go ahead with the joint protest, otherwise why would the security also allow us all inside the campus”
He adds, “Even students from MANUU were there at the protest, then why are they selectively targeting students from HCU in this?”
In a letter to the Chief Minister KCR and Home Minister Mohammed Mahmood Ali of Telangana, TN Prathapan, MP from Kerala expressed his disappointment with the Telangana State government for this move. He went on to request the State government to intervene and repeal the charges against the students immediately.
The letter says “The FIR should be dispersed in order to protect the Fundamental rights of the students to protest. If we cannot tolerate students’ dissent in our society, it means we are no more Democratic.”
Manikanta says, “We are happy (that TN Prathapan wrote to the HM) because it’s the time for extending solidarity and also standing beside each other. Which was also the main motto of the CAA and NRC joint protest.”
Upon asking what he intends to do next, he says,“I have been trying to reach out to the Investigation Officer of this case, but after his first call, I haven’t been able to reach out to him. I have no idea what exactly they want to do. It is suspicious that they hadn’t informed us about this for this long.”
“It is also shocking that our own university(HCU) gave away our information to the police without informing us”.
