LPU violence sparks political row in Punjab over safety
The violence in Phagwara’s Lovely Professional University following allegations of a woman student being raped on campus snowballed into a full-scale political controversy on Monday with Opposition parties lashing out at Punjab’s ruling AAP over law and order and blaming the police for laxity.
The BJP also alleged that the violence was linked to Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s rally scheduled in Jalandhar on September 3, and accused the Bhagwant Mann Government of sending miscreants to the university.
Shah will address the rally to mark the culmination of the BJP’s ‘Nasha Mukt Punjab Yatra’. LPU students allegedly went on a rampage on the campus late Saturday, vandalising property and blocking a stretch of the New Delhi-Amritsar highway outside their campus over claims that a plumber had raped a female student on the university premises.
Another wave of violence erupted on Sunday evening after the protesting students allegedly pelted police personnel with stones and attacked their vehicles, leaving several cops injured on Sunday, officials said.
The situation remained peaceful on the LPU campus on Monday.
BJP leader and former Union minister Ravneet Singh Bittu alleged that the AAP was “rattled” by the support for the BJP’s anti-drug yatras and blamed the Mann Government for “allowing riots” in Jalandhar to disturb Shah’s scheduled rally. He said the Government in Punjab is set to change in a few months and officials will be held accountable. Punjab is scheduled to go to polls early next year. Bittu claimed that police adopted a “lax” approach, allowing miscreants to indulge in arson and vandalism and leaving police personnel and students injured.
