Pulwama remark: Law student hits teacher

NEW DELHI: A guest faculty member at Delhi University’s Law Faculty was allegedly assaulted by a student who claimed that the teacher had made an “insensitive” statement about the death of the CRPF personnel in the Pulwama attack.

While the teacher, who prefers to stay anonymous, has filed a police complaint, Devendra Barala, a third-year student, received a showcause notice from Joint Student-Teachers’ Consultative Committee on Friday to explain his behaviour. Ved Kumari, dean of Law Faculty, said the department would constitute a committee to investigate the matter.

The teacher told TOI, “I never said anything of the sort. He assaulted me and then dragged me to Maurice Nagar police station. But I managed to file an assault case against him.”

However, Barala has claimed in a letter to the dean and the DU vice-chancellor that on the day of the Pulwama attack, he tried to show a video of the incident to the teacher outside the class but he refused claiming it to be a propaganda material. “The professor said why feel sad for those who are there to die,” he alleged, adding that the next day, the teacher had stuck to his point.

The teacher claimed he had told the student, who was trying to show him a video on WhatsApp, that “you should not believe in whatever you see on social media as these are often fake or part of propaganda”.

On February 20, Barala told TOI, the teacher told him that “I should not be emotional and that the Armymen are dying in northeastern states and Jharkhand as well.” After this, Barala said, he took the teacher to the police station for his “anti-national” comments, but cops filed a case against him.

The teacher said it was Barala who came and asked him about his views on the attack. “I told him ‘it is a condemnable incident and there is no justification for terror’. I also told him that ‘we must also criticise the government’. The student didn’t like it and attacked and forced me to the police station.”