New Delhi, Feb 15: The Patiala House Court, which often sees the trial of high-profile people, became a battle-ground on Monday when some lawyers and Bharatiya Janata Party leader O P Sharma along with his supporters thrashed students of Jawaharlala Nehru University (JNU). JNU students and journalists were assaulted by the lawyers when the Delhi police was about to produce JNU student Union President, Kanhaiya Kumar,who has been arrested on charges of sedition, before Patiala House Court. What shocking is the police acted as mere spectator throughout the violence.
“I don’t know who hit me or why they hit me. I started to run from the courtroom. Fortunately, some lawyers who knew me protected me from further assault,” said IANS reporter Amiya Kumar Kushwaha. Indian Express reporter Alok Singh told IANS that he and a group of journalists were standing outside the courtroom when some lawyers pounced on JNU students there and began thrashing them. (ALSO READ: Nitish Kumar flays Centre for booking JNUSU chief on sedition charge)
BJP MLA OP Sharma beats up an unidentified man outside Delhi’s Patiala House court. pic.twitter.com/Scmm7sclNh
— ANI (@ANI_news) February 15, 2016
“As I started speaking to my chief reporter, the lawyers attacked me too. I kept telling them I was a journalist but they wouldn’t listen,” Singh said. “They slapped me, they kicked me, they snatched my mobile and broke it. And I saw others also being attacked for no apparent reason,” he added.
Sana Shakil, a reporter for the Times of India who was present at the scene, told The Scroll that the attackers were calling media personnel ‘terrorist’. “Mediawaale to vaise hi terrorists hai. Journalists are anyways terrorists, and they also look like JNU supporters, this is what they were yelling as they started to get violent,” she said. O P Sharma, one of the three BJP legislators in the Delhi assembly, was also caught on camera chasing and hitting a JNU student outside the court.
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