The Opposition on Saturday blamed the Mehbooba Mufti government for its alleged failure to protect Kashmiri students outside the state, after two Kashmiri students of the Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agriculture Science and Technology (SKUAST) were arrested in Bhopal and released after two days of alleged thrashing in police lockup. SKUAST students said that they were part of a team that had gone to Bhopal for a training course. They said that when they were returning from Bhopal in a Delhi-bound train on 31 January, a local woman, who was in their compartment, tweeted that dozens of Kashmiris were carrying bombs in the train.
SKUAST authorities told this newspaper that it was only after a team from the university rushed to Bhopal that the students were released on Friday. All the 24 students, including female students, are in a state of shock. Mohammed Idrees, a student of SKUAST, was allegedly thrashed by the police in the Habib Ganj police station of Bhopal as he was carrying a portable gas cylinder which “they claimed was a bomb”, a university official said.
In a related development, Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti on Saturday said that she has asked the Haryana government to take strict action against “the criminals” who “thrashed” the two Kashmiri students of the Central University of Haryana in Mahendragarh.
The state government said that FIR has been registered and three suspects have been arrested.