Aligarh Muslim University - UPDATE

The Aligarh Muslim University, one of India's oldest universities, is in the news once again for the wrong reasons. On September 16, at around 10 pm, BSc II year student Mazhar Nayeem was shot dead. He was a resident of room 10, Mumtaz House at the Aftab Hall of Residence.

Some unidentified people shot Nayeem at point-blank range and fled. Like many previous killings in AMU, it is not known who killed Nayeem and why.

Students close to Nayeem say he was not involved in any controversy, did not have any love affair; there was no known rivalry in his family in the Baghpat district of Uttar Pradesh. The boy was gentle, religious, and had a small friend circle of like-minded students.

Thus, in many ways, this murder resembles a series of murders in the recent past in AMU -- a residential university which is home to 25,000 students in the north Indian town of Aligarh, about 125 km from the national capital New Delhi.

In April, two undergraduate students were killed in separate incidents. The murders were then linked to the ongoing process of empanelment of the new vice-chancellor as the then vice-chancellor Naseem Ahmad had completed his five-year term.

Nayeem's murder was followed by mass violence on the campus on Monday. Angry students burnt the vice-chancellor's home, the proctor's office and other university property.

The students' anger and frustration mounted because before Nayeem's murder, a Class IX girl was allegedly raped by some non-teaching employees of the girls' hostel on September 8. Despite protests, no action was taken against the alleged rapists.

The administration allegedly tried to cover up the incident, but the girl students broke out of the hostel on September 12 and staged a demonstration before the VC's office. Only wide media coverage persuaded the vice-chancellor to institute an inquiry, that too headed by a male, which is in violation of Supreme Court's directives.

Source: rediff.com