Five students expelled, booked for assault on Assamese postgraduate student at MP university

Five students have been expelled and booked for allegedly assaulting a 22-year-old postgraduate student from Assam at a hostel of Indira Gandhi National Tribal University (IGNTU) in Amarkantak, Madhya Pradesh’s Anuppur district, police said on January 16.
An FIR was registered against the accused shortly before midnight on Wednesday on the complaint of Hiros Jyoti Das, a postgraduate student of economics at IGNTU, Anuppur Sub-Divisional Officer of Police Naveen Tiwari told PTI.
The accused have been booked under sections 115(2) (voluntarily causing hurt), 296 (obscene acts and words), 351(3) (criminal intimidation) and 3(5) (common intention) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS).
According to the police, the university informed them that the five students had already been expelled by the disciplinary committee a day earlier. As per Das’s complaint, the incident occurred around 4 pm on January 13, when he was returning to his hostel room from the washroom.
“The accused allegedly asked him where he was from and what he was doing at the university. They then assaulted him,” Tiwari said. Das told the police that he has been studying at the university for the past three years and sustained injuries to his eyes, lips, nose and temples after being hit with a bracelet.
He has named Anurag Pande, Jatin Singh, Rajnish Tripathi, Vishal Yadav and Utkarsh Singh as the accused in his complaint.
Asked whether racial slurs were used during the assault, the officer said the matter is under investigation. “The motive behind the assault will be clear after questioning the students. Das’s medico-legal certificate report is awaited,” Tiwari added.
The incident comes close on the heels of the death of Anjel Chakma, a student from Tripura, in Dehradun last month, which had triggered nationwide outrage and renewed calls for stricter action against hate crimes targeting students from the Northeast.
Attempts to contact Das and IGNTU Registrar Professor NS Hari Narayana Moorthy were unsuccessful.
Meanwhile, the Madhya Pradesh Congress slammed the ruling BJP over the incident. Leader of the Opposition in the state Assembly, Umang Singhar, alleged that some unruly students made racist remarks against Das and assaulted him when he protested.
Singhar claimed that youths linked to the ruling party consumed drugs on the campus and assaulted students, while the university administration took only token disciplinary action. He further alleged that the central university had become a hub of the BJP and the RSS, with irregularities and incidents frequently surfacing.
The Congress and the RSS-affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), in separate statements, expressed concern over the atmosphere on the IGNTU campus. The ABVP submitted a memorandum to the Anuppur Superintendent of Police, alleging that the campus was increasingly becoming unsafe due to the presence of anti-social elements, drunkards and drug users.
“If the situation does not improve at the university within two weeks, we will launch an agitation,” Anuppur district ABVP organising secretary Shivendra Chaturvedi said.
In a related incident, Anjel Chakma (24), a final-year MBA student from Tripura, was allegedly attacked with a knife at a private university in Dehradun on December 9 and died on December 26 after undergoing treatment for 17 days.