Tamil Students Attacked In JNU Were Part Of SFI Group That Vandalised Portrait Of Shivaji Maharaj, Says Annamalai In Counter To Chief Minister MK Stalin

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) state president K Annamalai said that it is unfortunate that Chief Minister MK Stalin is supporting a fake narrative being spread by the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) IT Wing, regarding Tamil students in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), being attacked and portraits of EV Ramasamy (Periyar) and Karl Marx being damaged.

Stalin in a series of tweets said that he condemned the attack carried out by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) on Tamil students. He added that the police and security staff had remained mute spectators because the ABVP was involved and said that the university must take strict action.

The Tamil students were either members or sympathisers of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-CPI(M) affiliated Students Federation of India (SFI).

According to Annamalai, on 19 February, the ABVP scheduled an event at 6:30 PM to honour Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj on his birth anniversary in the student activity centre but the ABVP’s event could start only at 7:30 PM because an event of the SFI had extended beyond the allotted time.

After about an hour, when the ABVP students had left the centre for a dinner break, SFI students vandalised the portraits of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj and Maharana Pratap even though the portraits had been kept there with permission.

Finding that the portraits of Shivaji Maharaj and Maharana Pratap had been vandalised, angry ABVP students confronted the SFI. The SFI members behaved rudely and told them that the activity centre could contain only portraits of Karl Marx and Lenin.

Later, the SFI students abused female students of the ABVP and this led to an exchange of blows from either side and thus, both ABVP and SFI students were injured.

Annamalai added that Stalin should have advised the students to live with ideological differences instead of fuelling the fire. Further, he said that Stalin was yet to show any concern for army soldier Prabhu, who was beaten to death by a DMK councillor and his associates.

Also Read: Army Soldier Prabhu’s Death: BJP To Conduct A Fast And Lead A Protest March To The War Memorial In Chennai On 21 February To Condemn DMK’s Attitude, Says Annamalai