Three FIRs lodged against students of QAU

Classes resume after 20 days even as police remained deployed at the university

ISLAMABAD : Police have released all the students they had arrested from the Quaid-e-Azam University (QAU) on Monday after registering three separate criminal cases against dozens of students. Police had held a total of 70 students from QAU and locked them up in different police stations.

Interestingly, as the protesting students were baton charged by the police resulting in injuries to some of them, the police maintained in the FIRs that it was the students who attacked the law-enforcers.

In one case, unknown students have also been booked for allegedly snatching purse of a policeman as well as cops’ helmets, shields and sticks.

While students say they were badly beaten up, the police say the students were forcibly closing university classrooms and barring buses from operating. A total of 48 students have been nominated in two cases of rioting, obstruction and damage of property. Another case was registered against unidentified persons. Majority of the students arrested and booked are from the Baloch Students Council.



Meanwhile, the university opened and classes were held on Tuesday even as police remained deployed at the university. On the other hand, dozens of students held a rally from QAU to the press club demanding restoration of their expelled fellows.

QAU Vice-Chancellors Dr Javed Ashraf has termed the protesters who tried to halt academic activities on Monday as ‘unruly individuals’ and claimed that most of them were not even university’s students.

The main reason behind the ongoing crisis is a violent clash which took place at the university on May 20 this year between the university’s Baloch and Sindhi student groups.



The clash which involved use of firearm had left around a dozen injured and forced the university to close for a few days. Subsequently, the university’s disciplinary committee (UDC) expelled and rusticated a total of 42 students as punishment.

The protesting students’ chief demand is that all those expelled or rusticated after May 20 violence be restored, a demand the university’s administration as well as the faculty is unwilling to accept.

A three-member committee comprising officials from the Higher Education Commission, Ministry of Federal Education and a lawmaker is currently reviewing the process adopted by the UDC while awarding punishments to students. It will submit its report to the university’s syndicate by November 3.