Police release detained QAU students after registering FIRs

ISLAMABAD: Authorities on Tuesday released around 70 students who had been arrested from the Quaid-i-Azam University (QAU) for blocking a road leading to the campus and forcibly keeping the varsity shut.

However, the release came after three separate criminal cases were registered against dozens of students.

While 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 had attacked the law-enforcers.

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

While the students maintain that they were beaten badly, the police say the students had forcibly closed university classrooms and barred the buses from operating.

Officials have booked a total of 48 students - most of whom belong to Baloch Student’s Council - in two cases of rioting, obstruction and damage to property.

Another case was registered against unidentified people.

Varsity reopens

QAU enjoyed its first full day of normal operations on Tuesday, albeit under heavy police guard.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 25^th, 2017.