UoH penalises 3 students for CAA protest, says focus on studies

Hyderabad: The University of Hyderabad has penalised some students for organising an event, Shaheen Bagh Night, on 31 January 2020, in solidarity with the protests led by women at Shaheen Bagh in Delhi against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).

The official orders were released by the UoH registrar on 18 February. As per the university rules, there is no permission to conduct any event after 9 p.m. on the campus premises, the university officials said.

A fine of Rs. 5,000 was imposed on two PhD students, Faseeh Ahmed E.K from the department of communication and Sahana Pradeep from the department of translation studies, and an MA English student, A.S Adish, after the authorities received an incident report from the concerned security official.

According to the incident report, the three students were in the organising committee and conducted the event from 9 p.m to 2:30 a.m. The report further said the students were also involved in painting graffiti and defacing the walls of the North Shopping complex in spite of instructions from the security personnel not to conduct the events as they did not have permission.

Students who were penalised said there is a rise in such instances where voices of students are being suppressed, especially if the students are from marginalised communities. “In these kinds of instances, we usually first receive show cause notice and then are penalised. But the university administration has directly released the notice this time,” said a student.

The students were asked to remit the amount to Gurbaksh Singh Students Assistance Fund (GBSSAF) within 10 days of serving the notice. The university in its notice said, “Students are sternly warned to be cautious and focus on their studies in future. And recurrence of such incidents or indulging in any acts of indiscipline would have serious repercussions on their academic career with strong disciplinary action.”