Chennai: The Madras high court has directed the Puducherry police to provide protection to the Pondicherry University. The court gave the order after stating it is strange that in a higher educational institution, the teaching staff, administrative staff and students along with third parties form groups and fight with each other paralysing the entire institution. Justice N. Kirubakaran also directed the DGP, Puducherry and the officer on special duty-cum-superintendent of police, Puducherry, to appear before the court on November 7 while passing interim orders on a petition from C.Vinod Kumar, a student of the University, seeking peaceful atmosphere in the University.
The judge said a perusal of the records, especially, FIRs registered on previous occasions regarding violence occurred in August, 2015 and the FIR dated September 29, 2017 would reveal that the atmosphere is marred by violent acts. “It is strange that in a higher educational institution teaching staff, administrative staff and students along with third parties form groups and fight with each other paralyzing the entire institution, vitiating the academic atmosphere in the campus which is not good for any of the stake holders,” the judge added. The judge said from the letter of the chairman of Pondicherry University Employees Joint Action Committee to the president of Pondicherry University Teachers Association, it was clear that the vice chancellor was called as accused and they called for sealing of the crime scene namely vice chancellor's office of the PU.
If there were allegations against the vice chancellor, there were way and means to fight with the vice chancellor as per law and they cannot prevent the VC from entering into her office. “In view of that the authorities are directed to give appropriate police security to the university to prevent any untoward incidents vitiating the atmosphere in the university” the judge added. Though FIRs have been registered with regard to the 2015 incident, no investigation has been conducted so far.
There was no point in registering FIRs alone without conducting investigation and laying charge sheet, without prosecuting the case, especially vandalism took place in a higher education institution like PU, which was classified as 6th top university among the central universities in the country. In the absence of any further investigation would show that the police were not only disinterested in investigation of the case but also protecting the university from the miscreants, the judge added and posed 11 queries to authorities.
