A college in Meerut city in Uttar Pradesh has suspended a Muslim student who had complained that her classmates had forced her to wear a Bharatiya Janata Party cap, The Times of India reported. On April 3, the student tweeted about the alleged harassment during a bus journey to Agra and claimed that the four faculty members present did nothing to help her.
The complainant told the police that she was under pressure to withdraw her complaint. She had also alleged that the accused touched her inappropriately. “I was the only Muslim student [in the bus],” she had tweeted. “We had four faculty members out of which two were male members. The students got drunk and they made me their target.” The college told the newspaper that they suspended her because she had “failed to appear in front of an internal grievance cell” to record her complaint. “In a disciplinary action, we have suspended her,” college director SM Sharma said. “Besides, we have been under pressure ever since we rusticated two students.”
Meanwhile, the Bajrang Dal and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad have demanded that the rustication be revoked. “When her classmates who were present during the trip are claiming that she had lied on Twitter, why has the college rusticated students while an investigation is pending,” Bajrang Dal’s Uttar Pradesh (West) convenor Balraj Dungar told The Times of India.
Her post on Twitter got many reactions including a tweet from Congress MP Shashi Tharoor who said, “If this is [PM Narendra] Modi’s ‘New India’, I want our ‘Old India’ back!”
