Hooliganism complaint: ‘Private college vandalised, staff beaten’

College administration says assailants were asked to move away from entrance after harassment complaints by students

GUJRANWALA:

A private college in Gujranwala was vandalised and its staff beaten up by a group of men who were asked to move away from the entrance after harassment complaints by some students.

An FIR has been registered on the complaints of Makhdoom Siddiqi, the college principal, against 15 men, of whom three have been identified as Muhammad Waqas, Tanvir Ahmed and Shahbaz Ahmed.

SHO Mohsin Majeed Jathool said a team had been sent to arrest the suspects.

The FIR stated that three staff members –Muhammad Umer, a security guard; Abdus Sattar, a peon, and Rashida Bibi, a janitor – were injured in beating by the suspects. It said they were attacked with cricket bats on resisting the suspects, who also vandalised furniture and windows and broke doors of several classrooms. It said the attack had followed an argument between the guard and the three suspects who were standing next to the entrance.

“They were asked to move away from the entrance after some students complained that they were harassed on their way out of the college during lunch break,” Principal Makhdoom Siddiqi told The Express Tribune. He said the complaint received on Tuesday was not a one off. He said he had been receiving similar complaints for several weeks.

The FIR mentioned Sections 152 (assault to obstruct public servant when suppressing a riot), 454 (lurking house-trespass or house-break in order to commit an offence punishable with imprisonment), 427 (mischief causing damage to the amount of fifty rupees) and 149 (rioting).
Talking to The Tribune, one of the suspects, Muhammad Waqas, denied the allegations. He said that he and his brother were illegally detained and beaten up by college administration. He said his brother Muhammad Anas was also shot at by a security guard. He said they were waiting for a niece, who he said was a student at the college, when the guard and some other staff caught them and took them inside the college where they were beaten up. Waqas said the guard had bore him and his brother a grudge because of a quarrel between them earlier in the day. “He had intervened in an argument we (he and his brother) were having with a man after a collision between our motorbikes on the road in front of the college,” he said.

According to a medico-legal certificate issued by the Civil Hospital in Gujranwala, Anas had suffered a bullet injury to the right thigh.

The principal denied that anyone was shot at or illegally detained at the college.

Demonstration

Dozens of college students staged a demonstration to protest harassment in front of the entrance.

Ayesha Ikram, one of the protesters, said men on the walk from the college to  bus stop regularly harassed girls.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 5^th, 2012.