In a midnight crackdown on protesting MBBS students of Rohtak PGI, police 'use water-cannons and forcibly remove them' from dharna site

Tribune News Service

Sunit Dhawan

Rohtak, November 5

In a midnight crackdown on MBBS students of Rohtak PGI protesting on the institute campus, the police allegedly used water-cannons and forcibly removed them from the dharna site.

According to the students, nearly 200 students, including girls, were rounded up by the police around 2 am. They were made to board police buses and taken away from the PGI campus.

"The policemen used water-cannons and then started dragging the students sitting on dharna towards the buses. Even the girl students were subjected to rough treatment. Policemen dragged, pulled and lifted the students and put them in the buses," said a student.

The police action came hours ahead of the visit of the Governor, Chief Minister and Home Minister to the PGI campus for the convocation of Pt Bhagwat Dayal Sharma University of Health Sciences, Rohtak.

The venue of the convocation is a stone's throw from the site where the students had been staging a protest for the past four days.

The MBBS students of the government medical colleges of Haryana, including Rohtak PGI, have been protesting against the imposition of Rs 36 lakh bond fees by the state government.

Rohtak SP Udai Singh Meena told The Tribune that some of the protesting MBBS students had been arrested and an FIR registered against them, while some others had been detained as a preventive measure.

"On Friday night, the students shifted the venue of their protest from the PGI director's office to the auditorium where the Governor, Chief Minister and Home Minister are scheduled to attend a convocation ceremony on Saturday. Officials of Pt Bhagwat Dayal Sharma University of Health Sciences, police and district administration tried to convince the students not to stage a protest near the auditorium for security reasons, but they remained adamant. Hence, we had to detain/arrest them," Meena said.

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