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Police tighten dragnet around errant AMU students

Sharat Pradhan in Lucknow

The Uttar Pradesh police has tightened its dragnet on the Aligarh Muslim University, which was suspected to have become a haven for some Kashmiri militants with alleged Pakistani links.

In continuation of the administration's drive to flush out such undesirable elements from the campus, the police carried out searches in two of the hostels, but ended up without laying their hands on anything substantial.

The state police built up pressure on the university only after the Intelligence Bureau took exception to the initial indifference shown by the district administration towards the kidnapping and assault on the local IB man by some inmates of AMU's Habib Hall last week.

However , what continues to irk the IB top brass in New Delhi was the failure of the Aligarh district administration in apprehending any of the eight students who were understood to have been directly involved in the assault. It was primarily to placate the IB that the local authorities on Saturday ordered attachment of the property of each of the eight accused.

IB sources in Lucknow do not role out the possibility of connivance of the local police and administrative authorities in allowing the suspects to abscond. It is said that the Aligarh district administration's reluctance to act swiftly when the controversy broke out gave the suspects an opportunity to go underground.

Meanwhile, even as AMU students were trying to give a communal colour to the government's crackdown on some of the hostels , UP's principal home secretary V K Mittal was convinced about the antecedents of the suspected students who were also members of the Students Islamic Movement of India. Much about their direct nexus with the militant outfit, Hisb-ul Mujahideen was divulged by Abdul Mobeen , the AMU student who was arrested from Aligarh for his deep involvement in the spate of bomb blasts on Independence day.

Mittal was quite explicit in refuting the students' charge. He said, "We are certainly not after the university nor are we trying to hound all those who were members of SIMI. Our intention was only to pin down those students who were involved in anti-national activity," while hastening to add, "and I am convinced that their number is not high."

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