[Reader-list] Press release from Faculty and Staff of MCRC

[shohini]

PRESS RELEASE

We, the faculty and staff of the AJK Mass Communication Research Centre (AJK MCRC), Jamia Millia Islamia, strongly condemn the forceful detention and interrogation of three of our students, Ruhail Amin, Rita Namban and Shahabuddin. The students were picked up from Connought Place on grounds that they had been shooting in the vicinity of the American Centre. When the police viewed the footage it was confirmed that the students had only been shooting the traffic in front of the Hindustan Times Building. 

The police took the students and the accompanying crewmembers of the AJK MCRC to the Rajiv Chowk police station despite been shown an official letter from the University and told that they were shooting with equipment and transport that belonged to the MCRC. Ignoring repeated requests from the students, the police refused to contact the University authorities. They also prevented the students from doing so by taking away their mobiles phones. The three students were subject to interrogation by the Special Branch and Intelligence Bureau and were finally released when their teachers along with the Proctor of the University went and intervened on their behalf. Despite protests, the police insisted on photographing them with nameplates held against their chest. 

Moreover, the police had taken the liberty of calling the press even as the students and teachers were in the premises of the Rajiv Chowk police station. One TV channel lost no time in telecasting that "the terrorists who had been caught in front of the American Centre had turned out to be students of Jamia University." We are shocked and distressed at how some national newspapers have carried similar stories without once speaking to the University authorities or verifying the claims made by the Delhi police. In these reports, the ambivalence that the students could possibly be "terrorists" is heightened by identifying one of the students as being from Kashmir. 

If anything, the students were only guilty of being unaware of possible regulations pertaining to the shooting in New Delhi District. This action does not tantamount to any violation that could justify the actions of the police and the subsequent reporting by some sections of the press. We strongly protest against the arbitrary actions of the police and demand that any documentation (photographs, statements and observations) undertaken by the police station be made available to the students so that their record is not adversely prejudiced. 





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