A terrified situation is ongoing in one of the most premier private university in India, the KIIT University, Bhubaneswar, Odisha where the students of two branches: the law school and the engineering school of the varsity entered in a violent clash with each other. The huge uproar was triggered in the students of both the branches after a boy student of second year engineering branch passed some obscene remarks on a fifth year girl student of the law department. According to students studying at KIIT University after this incident, violent clashes erupted between students of law and engineering branches. The law students demanded an apology, following which the engineering students gathered in huge numbers outside the gates of the law hostel and started pelting the gates with stones and bottles. This further escalated after the engineering students reportedly entered the hostel and started to ambush law students with bats and other heavy objects, beating them with it. The students of the engineering department continued the violence on the second day in the broad daylight as well. The University administration seemed to be sitting back at the home and enjoying the show of terror in the campus. These violent activities have shattered the image of the educated youths in the country. Due to this inhuman violent incident, the students are in terror and section 144 of the Cr.PC. (curfew) has been imposed in the campus. The law students have been asked to vacate the hostels as soon as possible. Around 22 law and engineering students have been hospitalised as they were seriously injured.

Bhubaneswar:5 detained after clash b/w2 groups at KIIT University campus y'day.Section 144 imposed,KIIT School of Law closed sine die.State Reserved Protection Force deployed.Scuffle broke out allegedly when 2nd yr B-Tech student passed lewd comments at 5th yr Law student.#Odisha pic.twitter.com/mmVjKLPaC5

— ANI (@ANI) November 25, 2018

The news that university administration has “sine-die” (suspended) the law program till further notice was out on Sunday morning but later the day KIIT administration issued a clarification that the order of sine-die has not been passed. 

This step of the university administration came after huge uproar was raised in the legal fraternity of the nation. Students as well as academicians from various private universities and NLUs have expressed their grief over the incident and have criticized the university administration and have also said that the University administration is not able enough to manage such incidents and it is a mark of failure of the administrative machinery in the KIIT.

Eve-teasing is a sensitive issue, if the gender sensitization cell of the varsity should have taken suo-motu cognizance of the incident and it should have primarily intervened in the matter, this violence could have been avoided. Also, as seen in many video footages of the incident, no security guards were there in the hostel. Do the students pay a fair amount to the university for living in such an insecure environment? KIIT incident is a lesson to the youths and the private colleges that group based violent face of students’ politics has reached the doorsteps of premier private institutions, if nothing is done right now and lesson is not learnt, then no doubt in future such incidents will rise.

Huge Police forces have been deployed in KIIT University seeing the violent approach of students. Curfew has been imposed and ironically KIIT administration is saying that all is well in the varsity. Photos and videos of the incident have already been viral on the WhatsApp groups of the law students of the country. It is hard to believe that situation is normalized. The law students of the entire nation are in support of the law school of KIIT and have shown their support via various social media sites.

@ZeeNews See the brutality by which law students of KIIT UNIVERSITY are treated by engineering students. The students in the lift are law students who have been brutally beaten up.
Shame!!!
Extremely inhuman and insane behavior. pic.twitter.com/YRBZzn6kDn

— Adeesh Giri (@adeeshkumar1409) November 24, 2018

One of the major reasons for this kind of violence is the inefficient and incapable administration. Around 12000 engineering students are there, around 1600 law students and around 27000 total students including students from MBA, MBBS and Arts faculty are there. Now, the question is that whether the university administration is able enough to manage the 30000+ students in the campus? After this incident of KIIT, a serious question mark can be raised on the functioning of the private institutions who are admitting students on a “roller-coaster” basis. If the private institutions are not capable enough to manage the students, are they admitting the students on such countless bases just for the high fees which is being paid by them?  

There has been violent activities in the state universities and other traditional universities (bollywood movies like- Hasil, Gulaal and Dil Dosti Etc are examples which show that the state machinery has failed to ensure peace in the campuses of govt. institutions) in past but this case is an unique example which shows that the violence has increased its ‘territorial jurisdiction’ to the premier private institutions like KIIT.

KIIT is a brain child of renowned social activist and entrepreneur Achyuta Samantha.  Many students from the various parts of the country get admission in the KIIT University with a hope of passing out with a guaranteed placement and knowledge of the profession but if the students are not safe within the campus, within their hostel rooms, we can imagine that what kind of environment the university is providing to them?

Given that the engineering students are around ten times more in number than the law students in the campus, can the university guarantee the security of all the law students in the campus? Also, an immediate action needs to be taken on the eve-teasing incident and an independent investigation unit should be set up which shall not consist of any faculty member from the law school or the engineering school and action should be taken on the students who have instigated the violence in campus.

Legal Desire strongly criticises such incident in KIIT and prays for the earliest recovery of the victims of the violence because we know, all is not well in KIIT!