Police have registered a criminal case against members of a student reading group at Azim Premji University in Bangalore a day after activists linked to a right-wing student organisation disrupted a campus discussion on the 1991 Kunan Poshpora mass rape allegations, officials said.
The complaint was filed by university registrar Rishikesh BS, who alleged that the Spark Reading Circle had organised the event without prior approval from the administration.
The discussion, held on Tuesday evening, was organised by Spark APU, a reading circle affiliated with the All India Students Association, the student wing of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation.
According to the complaint, the administration was unaware of the programme. It cited social media posts by the group referring to the alleged mass rape of women by army personnel in the villages of Kunan and Poshpora in Jammu and Kashmir in February 1991, and inviting students to a discussion on what it described as violence by the Indian state in Kashmir.
Based on the complaint, Sarjapur police registered a case against the office bearers of the reading circle under Section 299 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, which pertains to deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings, along with provisions of the Information Technology Act.
The registrar’s complaint also said that activists affiliated with the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) subsequently entered the campus without authorisation, assaulted a student and a security guard, and damaged property.
It further alleged that the reading circle had previously circulated false and defamatory information about the university and had now disseminated “communally hateful messages” using the institution’s name.
ABVP activists had objected to the event, which centred on one of the most widely reported cases of alleged sexual violence in the region’s insurgency-era history. The Indian Army has in the past denied the allegations.
Protests were reported at the university and other campuses following the incident, with criticism of the ABVP’s actions circulating on social media.
A local court on Wednesday granted bail to 25 ABVP activists who had been arrested in connection with the campus violence, police said.