Nine arrested over LPU violence
Nine persons, including seven students, have been apprehended in connection with the violence on the Lovely Professional University (LPU) campus, police said on Friday.
DIG Jalandhar Range Naveen Singla told reporters on Friday that two FIRs were registered in connection with the incidents of arson, loot, rioting, infrastructure damage, police vehicles being torched, unprovoked attack on police force and blockade of the national highway.
“In both these FIRs, based on CCTV footage, technical analysis, media posts, social media posts and other corroborative evidence, we have carried out nine arrests so far,” the DIG said.
Among those apprehended is a juvenile, he said.
In another incident in which students of Chitkara University in Patiala district had held a protest a week ago and also damaged a police vehicle over unverified claims that two female students allegedly committed suicide on the campus, Patiala police on Friday said they have arrested two people for spreading rumours on social media and other platforms leading to the incident.
In the incident involving LPU University in Phagwara, DIG Singla said four were apprehended from Phagwara, two were rounded up from Jammu and Kashmir, while two were apprehended from Mumbai.
Barring the juvenile, among those nabbed are one from Sonipat, two each from Phagwara, Jammu and Maharashtra and one from UP, said the police.
“Seven are students who are of LPU while two are outsiders,” Singla said, adding that 20 have been nominated in the case and the remaining will be arrested soon.
Asked if social media influencer and student Mohammad Farhat has also been nominated, “We have nominated Mohd Farhat. You must have seen posts on social media in which he is seen causing damage... We will arrest and question him.”
Farhat, however, had denied being involved in the violent protest.
Giving details of the sequence of events which led to the violence, DIG Singla said on September 26 evening, a social media post went viral in which it was mentioned that a girl had been raped in one of the hostels, but no action had been taken. Students gathered during the night and blocked the national highway and indulged in vandalism, he said.
“I, along with my three SSPs, reached the spot with heavy police force and we controlled the situation by the next morning. I want to state here that no force was used against students and restraint was exercised.
“The next morning, some students again blocked the national highway and we talked to them. Their demand was to register a case and we registered a rape case against unknown persons,” the DIG said.
The victim in the case was also unknown, as no one had any name, he said, and added, “We constituted a Special Investigation Team which is conducting investigations.”
LPU students had held a massive protest on Sunday and also blocked a stretch of the New Delhi-Amritsar Highway outside their campus over claims that an outsider had raped a female student on the university premises.
On Monday, a large number of students headed home following the suspension of classes for 10 days, leaving calm in their wake after days of unrest.
In the Chitkara University matter, Banur DSP Sukhdev Singh said no such incident took place there as had been claimed by the accused in the rumours they had spread.
On the rumours spread on social media and other platforms that two girls of Chitkara University had committed suicide, the police are taking strict action after registering an FIR, the DSP said.
“We have identified and arrested two youths. One has been identified as Himanshu from Nangal and another as Aryan from Ambala. We are questioning them. We have also nominated 10 more in the case and our teams will arrest them soon,” he said.
