Pune: Police in Pune have registered a case against 50 to 60 Youth Congress workers following a confrontation between members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) and the National Students’ Union of India (NSUI) at a university hostel.
The clash occurred late on Friday at the hostel campus of the College of Engineering, Pune (COEP), shortly ahead of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s Chhatron Ki Goonj interaction with female students at a city college on Saturday evening.
Following the incident, a substantial police presence was deployed at the campus to prevent the situation from escalating. The case was registered on Saturday morning after an ABVP member filed a complaint.
The accused have been booked under Sections 115(2), pertaining to voluntarily causing simple hurt; 189(1), concerning unlawful assembly; 351(1), relating to criminal intimidation; and other applicable provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) and the Maharashtra Police Act, as reported by Hindustan Times.
ABVP Claims Intimidation
ABVP state secretary Atharva Kulkarni alleged that NSUI members were attempting to compel students to attend Rahul Gandhi’s programme. He claimed the organisers were facing difficulties in attracting an audience for the event.
“Around 100-150 NSUI workers entered the COEP campus and heckled female students. Some of the students who tried to intervene were also targeted,” he alleged.
The ABVP leader further claimed that the presence of NSUI workers on the campus led to tension among students and eventually triggered the confrontation.
NSUI Disputes ABVP Version
NSUI members rejected the allegations and offered a different account of the events. They said some students had decided to attend Gandhi’s interaction to raise concerns over scholarship funds that they claimed had not been paid by the state government.
The organisation also denied that its members had heckled or harassed any student.
“When ABVP cadres came to know of this, they went to the university and requested them not to attend Gandhi’s event. We also went there and protested against ABVP for trying to stop students from attending Gandhi’s event,” said Akshay Jain, the Congress youth president for Pune city.
The police have begun investigating the rival allegations and the circumstances that led to the clash.