There was no lathi-charge on girls, claims BHU V-C Girish Chandra Tripathi

Varanasi: Girish Chandra Tripathi, the Vice-Chancellor of the Banaras Hindu University, has categorically denied any police crackdown on girl students who were protesting against incidents of eve-teasing at the varsity recently.

Speaking to DNA, BHU V-C rejected reports that girl students of the varsity were lathi-charged by police. 

"There was no police action on girls, it was only the outsiders engaged in violence who were attacked by police," Tripathi said.

Tripathi further claimed that the recent violence at the prestigious university was the handiwork of ''outsiders'' with ''vested interests.''

The incident of sexual harassment that led to protests by students was created by outsiders with vested interests who had an eye on the Prime Minister’s visit to Varanasi, he claimed.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP national president Amit Shah and several top political leaders have strongly condemned the alleged police crackdown on girl students at the BHU and called for exercising restraint.

Allaying concerns regarding the situation at the BHU, the Vice-Chancellor said that everything is "normal" on campus and whatever has come to the public domain is a propaganda by "outsiders".

Notably, protests erupted in BHU after a female student was allegedly molested by three bike-borne men on the campus on Thursday evening.

"When I became the VC of this university in 2014 there was a much bigger agitation going on here, more than 100 boys were admitted to hospital at that time. Things happen on campus, you cannot stop these things. This time, the matter has been taken out of context because of outsiders. Outsiders, including political parties, have created a negative situation to destroy peace on campus," Tripathi said in a telephonic conversation.

When quizzed about the safety of girls students inside the campus, the BHU V-C said, ''Ours is the only university that is completely covered by CCTV cameras. We got them installed long ago. In fact, when cameras were being installed the same girls who are protesting today came to us and said that cameras will disturb our privacy. There are 65 points already covered in the campus, which have CCTV cameras installed, there is no question of lack of security."

Referring to a charter of demands, including the deployment of women security guards, which the agitating students had given to BHU administration, the V-C said, "As a policy, we can only have ex-military men as security guards on the campus. However, we have initiated the process of getting women guards."

Importantly, the UP government had yesterday removed the Lanka Station House Officer, Circle Officer and an Additional City Magistrate (ACM) for failing to handle the situation at the BHU recently.