Hyderabad: Ayesha Renna and Ladeeda Sakhaloon, students of Jamia Milia Islamia, Delhi, were in the city on Tuesday to speak at protest meetings on the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and National Register of Citizens (NRC). Both women said they were undeterred by campaigns by the BJP to discredit them.
“Let them do whatever they want. We won’t be fazed. We will prevail,” they said.
The two women shot to fame overnight after they saved a journalist from being beaten up by the Delhi police on December 16.
The video of the incident and an image of Ayesha, wagging her finger at a lathi-wielding cop, asking him to leave, have been shared widely on social media.
Both women were met with much adulation by a small crowd at Lamakaan. Recalling the Delhi police’s infamous crackdown on Jamia students, Ayesha. “It was one of the scariest things that happened in recent times. The student community is physically and emotionally weak and scattered right now,” she said.
Ladeeda said that remembering the incident set shivers down her spine. She slammed the Delhi police: “The crackdown was a planned event. The police acted brutally. They entered the two libraries, reading room and even the campus mosque. They attacked everyone,” she said.
She added that she and Ayesha became famous only because their actions were caught on tape. “There are many brave women and men from our university who deserve as much fame and credit as we do,” she said.
Ayesha said that students had been asked to vacate their hostels in an apparent attempt to control the protests.
However, the protests had the support of Jamia’s teachers.
One of the participants asked the two women what they thought of posts being circulated on social media that tried to discredit them.
Ladeeda said, “We don’t care. Since this BJP government came to power, the party’s IT cell has tried to spread false information to discredit people like us. This has happened to many people in the past so we are just accepting it and ignoring it.”
