Dozens hurt and detained as JNUSU protest turns tense
Police said 25 officers, including ACP Ved Prakash, ACP Sanghamitra, SHO Atul Tyagi and Ajai Yadav, were injured.
The main gate of Jawaharlal Nehru University has seen protests before. It has seen poetry, passion, and the slow burn of political dissent. But on Thursday afternoon, February 26, it saw something else: teeth.
Around 3:20 pm, the crowd of students surged forward. They had gathered hours earlier, around 400 to 500 of them, answering the JNU Students’ Union call for a “Long March” to the Ministry of Education. The issues were heavy on their minds—the Vice Chancellor’s recent remarks on UGC norms, the rustication of student leaders, the proposed changes to the Rohith Act. But as they reached the gate, they found not an open road, but a wall of blue uniforms and steel barricades.
Police say the students attacked first. Banners became weapons. Sticks flew through the air. Shoes—cheap rubber sneakers, well-worn sandals—were hurled at the line of officers. Then, the physical assault began. In the scrum of bodies, somewhere in the chaos, an officer felt teeth sink into his arm. Another officer went down, kicked and punched. By the time it was over, 25 police personnel were injured, including two Assistant Commissioners of Police and two Station House Officers.
The students tell a different story. They say they were marching peacefully, exercising their democratic right to protest. Then the police moved in, and the batons came down. Boys and girls, some barely out of their teens, were shoved to the ground. A woman student, her arm twisted behind her back, screamed as she was dragged toward a waiting van. The police, they allege, used excessive force—force that left students bloodied and bruised.
Among the 51 detained was Aditi Mishra, the JNUSU president, and Nitish Kumar, a former president. Their faces, familiar to anyone who follows campus politics, were pushed into the backs of police vehicles as friends shouted their names.
Then came the image that would burn through social media. A portrait of B.R. Ambedkar, the architect of India’s Constitution and a icon for marginalized communities, was seen in the hands of police. The students allege it was snatched from them, damaged during the action. Videos surfaced online, grainy and chaotic, showing the framed image being pulled away. PTI could not verify the footage, but the damage to sentiment was already done.
In the teachers’ common room, the JNU Teachers Association gathered in emergency session. Their statement was sharp: they condemned the “brutal use of force” and expressed deep concern for students taken to “unconfirmed locations.” The phrase hung in the air—unconfirmed locations—conjuring images of lockups and interrogation rooms where no lawyer, no parent, no friend can follow.
The university administration, meanwhile, offered its own version. JNU issued a statement blaming the students for “vandalism and violence.” It noted that the Supreme Court had stayed the very UGC regulations the students were demanding. It pointed out that the rusticated students had been punished after a proper inquiry for violence inside the campus. And it defended Vice Chancellor Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit, a woman from an OBC background, who they said was being unfairly targeted to divert attention from the real issue.
Outside the campus, as evening fell, a different kind of gathering began. Supporters, alerted by the JNUSU’s urgent appeal, started assembling at the main gate. They held candles and placards. They chanted slogans. They waited for news of the detained.
Inside the police vans, the students sat in silence. Some nursed injuries—a swollen eye, a cut lip, a wrist that would later require a bandage. One girl, her voice trembling, asked the officer beside her where they were going. He didn’t answer.
At the police station, the paperwork began. An FIR was registered under multiple sections of the BNS: obstructing public servants, causing hurt to deter them from duty, assault, criminal force. The charges carried the weight of the state. For the students, many of whom had never seen the inside of a lockup, the night stretched long and cold.
Back on campus, a professor waited by the gate. His student, a bright young woman from a small town, hadn’t come home. He called her phone. No answer. He called again. Nothing. He stood there, in the February chill, watching the police lights flicker in the distance.
By midnight, some students were released. They emerged blinking into the harsh light of the station, embraced by friends who had waited hours. Others remained inside, their fates uncertain.
The gate of JNU, scarred by countless protests, stood quiet again. But the marks of Thursday—the torn banners, the broken barricades, the blood on the pavement—told a story that wouldn’t wash away. A story of students who marched, police who held the line, and a portrait of Ambedkar that became, for one violent afternoon, a casualty of war.
In the morning, classes would resume. But for those who were there, the memory of teeth and batons, of screams and silence, would linger long after the bruises healed.