Thiruvananthapuram: Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has justified the police action against KSU activists on May 16 in the capital saying that the provocation had come from the side of students. The opposition members, who held up bloodied shirts of KSU leaders in the Assembly and demanded a probe into what they termed a “police rampage”, walked out in protest.
Congress legislator Hibi Eden, while moving an adjournment on the police action against the KSU march in the Assembly on Wednesday, said that the police subjected the students to unprecedented violence.
“It was upon a group of students who were demonstrating peacefully that the police used water cannons, and hurled tear gas shells. They thrashed the heads of students with fibre lathis,” Mr Eden said. “The most unfortunate thing was that doctors at the Medical College refused to admit students who were grievously injured,” he added.
The Chief Minister said there was a reason why they were not admitted initially. “I was told that one person carried all the tokens to the doctor and seeing this, the doctor directed that each patient should come one by one,” Mr Vijayan said. “These boys were so badly injured that they could not walk. In such a situation what is wrong if one person took all their tokens to the doctor,” opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala asked.
Mr Vijayan, however, said that he had intervened promptly and directed the Medical College superintendent to do the needful. “Just when I heard that Oommen Chandy was staging a protest at the Medical College, I told them not to prolong things,” the Chief Minister said. Mr Chandy said that he had to stage a protest for two hours for the students to be admitted.
“Even then the doctor in charge refused to admit them. It was a doctor from the surgical wing who finally made the arrangements,” Mr Chandy said.
