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Chokehold: Law and Disorder Stifling Dissent in Jamia Millia Islamia

Maryam Hassan

Following two university-wide memoranda prohibiting protests and slogans on campus, Jamia Milia Islamia, one of the country’s most prominent minority institutions, which played a crucial role in mobilising agitations against the Citizenship Amendment Act in 2020, has become, yet again, a hotbed of State repression. Amidst students being detained and served with show-cause notices, groups have called for a university-wide boycott of classes.

As tensions flare up, police patrol has rapidly increased, strict identification checks have been put in place, and altercations have left students navigating an atmosphere of uncertainty.

Legally curbing expressions of protest

For many, memories of the forceful entry of and brutal crackdown by Delhi police on the campus following a confrontation with student protestors in December 2019, remain raw. In August 2022, a university-wide memorandum was issued, noting that some students with “political agendas” were holding “protests, dharnas and boycott campaigns on the campus for their malafide and political interests” disturbing the “peaceful academic environment” of the university. More than two years later, in November 2024, a second memorandum was released, allegedly in response to student protests against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which prohibited protests and slogans on campus without the administration’s permission. It noted that students had also protested against “other law enforcement agencies of the country on the issues which are not related to the academia as well as to the University.”

These office memoranda, by threatening hefty penalties such as expulsion, fines, and rustication have created an atmosphere of suppression where students risk serious consequences for dissent. Wrapped in the clothing of disciplinary measures, their implications on free speech and political engagements on campus are grave.

Soon after, on December 20, 2024, Jamia’s ‘Property Department’, warned against the defacement of property including writing, painting, and putting up posters without permission. While the Property Department’s mandate, on the face of it, is to upkeep campus infrastructure, it routinely fines and threatens legal action against students for “property defacement”, which includes putting up posters, graffiti or even paintings.

In its December 20 notice, the Department warned of a fine of up to Rs 20,000 for “defacing” university property, and warned of forwarding students’ names to the police for prosecution under state and central laws. It also informed, in a matter of fact way, of the decision to install more CCTV cameras around the 239 acre campus.

“The notice is emblematic of a broader tendency within institutions to frame dissent as something inherently disruptive rather than a form of engagement or dialogue.”, said Shah Kulsum Shaikh, a former Jamia student who led the graffiti scene during the 2019 CAA-NRC protests in the university.

The notice brazenly threatens students of prosecution under the Delhi Prevention of Property Defacement Act, 2007, a law which has been routinely invoked by the Delhi police to charge and harass student protestors. Section 3 of the Act provides for a fine of upto Rs 50,000 or a year of imprisonment for putting up posters or painting on walls. Just between 2020 and 2022, the police registered a whopping 1468 cases under the 2007 Act, and arrested 929 protestors.

The department also threatened to charge students under Section 324 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023. The provision allows imprisonment for upto five years alongwith fine for ‘mischief’. Of even more concern is that it is a cognizable charge – the police could arrest and start investigating without a judge’s permission.

The protests began on February 10, 2025, with students condemning the administrative repressions which included the issuance of the memoranda and the circulation of show cause notices against two PhD students of the varsity’s Hindi department, for allegedly organizing a demonstration last year commemorating the 2019 police violence in the campus. Tensions escalated in the early hours of February 13 when Delhi police detained more than 10 students from the protest site. By the time they released them the next day, the fear of shrinking campus security had already settled in.

Identification checks, police presence and flaring tensions

Since the beginning of the protests in February 2025, the university campus has witnessed increased police deployment with security personnel standing at the campus gates in large numbers. A rapid action force vehicle is stationed at the campus frequently. For students, it is an intimidating, everyday site . “Our University is our second home and their presence feels like an intrusion into my personal space,” said Archana Aggarwal, a student of the AJK Mass Communication Research Centre at Jamia Millia Islamia, “It does not make me feel safe at all.”

Archana generally commuted to the university through motorbike riding apps such as Uber and Ola. “Usually they allow the bike rider to drop me inside the campus. But since February 11, they have not been allowing that. They are also very strict about our ID card.”

“I have been a Jamia student since high school and never before have I encountered such stringent measures”, said a student, preferring to remain anonymous. “In case of a missing ID card, many students were asked to go back to their house to get it, despite having a copy of the same on their cellphones. This leads to disruption in our classes.”, the student added.

Frequent altercations have broken out between the students and the guards over these measures. The conflict escalated on February 11, 2025, when a physical brawl ensued between two guards and a student. According to some people who witnessed the incident, this happened after the student failed to show his identity card. Following this, several students blocked that gate and began protesting against the manhandling by the guard.

Disruptions on campus

Soon after the protests at the gate, a scuffle ensued between two groups of students. The police were quickly deployed on the scene, but accounts suggest they did little to pacify the conflict. According to The Jamia Review, an independent media organization at the university, “the police did not enter the campus and curb the situation.” A student of the varsity and an eyewitness to the account, Kashif (name changed) told the university-based outlet, “After the altercation between guards and students, a group of individuals arrived, demanding protestors to clear the campus. But what authority do they have? Many of them have campus bans for past misconduct yet enter freely without ID checks, unlike us. It seems the administration sent them to break up the protest.”

People I spoke to suggested that the disrupting students belong to informal blocs with a history of inciting hostilities on campus. Their precise association with administrative authorities remains unclear, yet the latter’s demonstrated indifference towards the disruptors was telling.

A few hours after this clash, the same group created a campus-wide ruckus. “With the gates of the campus closed, we were trapped inside, running all around in a state of panic and confusion.” Archana recalled. Imtiyaz, a student from the human resource management department recalled that the ruckus went on for thirty to forty minutes. “It exposed significant loopholes in how administrative authority was functioning,” he said. Some students alleged that the disturbance appeared as a deliberate move to undermine the larger protest environment.

“The timing and nature of this ruckus makes it clear, it was orchestrated to distract, divide, and delegitimize our struggle,” a student activist alleged, “The real culprits are those in power who manufacture these divisions to weaken the struggle.”

Unlike other central universities in Delhi, Jamia has survived without a student union since 2006. Formal accountability is difficult to pursue. “The administration’s refusal to allow [a student union] creates an authority gap, letting these factions run without accountability and threatening campus security,” a student protester, associated with the left-wing Student’s Federation of India (‘SFI’) said.

In an affront to privacy, student protestor’s personal details displayed

In the early hours of February 13, around 14 students – nine women and five men – were reportedly detained from the protest site. A video circulated from that day, shows them being hustled into police buses. As major protests erupted, they were released within the day.

However, on February 14, the administration, reportedly, publicly displayed a list of seventeen students who were alleged of organising a sit-in protest on February 10. This list detailed their names, emails, phone numbers, political affiliations, and photographs.

“I have been getting calls and messages since the morning. While many of them were to inform me about the list, some of them were random messages from unknown numbers.” said Sonakshi, one of the protesters whose details were displayed. She added that some individuals on the list were neither active participants in the protests, nor had any political affiliations. “This is a complete breach of privacy and leaves us vulnerable and exposed to attacks. We can even be lynched”, she said.

The Internet Freedom Foundation condemned this act calling it a “blatant violation of privacy”. The group noted that the actions not only “infringed upon the fundamental rights of these students”, but also created “a chilling effect on free speech and peaceful assembly.”

As journalists huddled outside the university’s gates, the list was surreptitiously taken down.

On February 15, the administration denied displaying the student’s details, blaming “anti-social elements” for the “name-and-shame” act. It also informed that a committee had been constituted to investigate the matter.

Students suspended, threatened with criminal charges

On February 12, like many others on the list, Sonakshi had faced suspension letters from the chief proctor’s office for “breach of disciplines”. The detailed suspension order noted that Sonakshi and other students violated Jamia’s “rules and regulations”, which included provisions under an ‘Ordinance 14’ – which prohibits the “disobeying the instructions of teachers”, “causing damage, spoiling or disfiguring to the property/equipment of the university”, and any conduct “considered unbecoming of a student.” Ordinance 14 prescribes students to be punished with fine, campus ban, expulsion and rustication.

“I had been regularly attending my classes in the morning and it was only after the classes that I participated in the sit-in protest. How can we disrupt classes if we, ourselves have been attending them?”, Sonakshi added, “Despite several requests for a meeting, the proctor has refused to engage with us.”

The suspension order also suggested that the student’s conduct was in violation of Sections 324, 189 and 356 of the BNS. Section 189 entails the punishment for “unlawful assembly”, putting students under the threat of imprisonment for upto six months with fine, while the last provision refers to defamatory actions.

It also, rather expectedly, threatens to charge the students under the 2007 property defacement law, just as the office memoranda had warned. The order does not detail how these charges were substantiated and how they were specifically linked to the student protesters. The grounds of prosecution are broad and unverified.

The call to boycott classes reaches a crescendo

Various departments of the university have released statements of solidarity with the protesting students and called for a boycott of classes. They have demanded the suspension orders and disciplinary actions to be revoked, for the student’s details to not be displayed, and for the “constitutional right to gather peacefully within the university” to be reinstated.

Sant Kumar, a PhD student from Jamia’s English department said, “In the absence of a student union, the responsibility falls upon us to stand with our peers and uphold the truth. They cannot silence everyone through suspensions”. Kumar is resolved that their demands could rebuild an academic space where the right to speech and discussion could thrive.

A press release of the SFI suggested that last Monday, over a hundred students protested in front of the history department seeking a withdrawal of the show-cause notices and suspensions. They also called for a revocation of the office memoranda issued in August 2022, and November 2024 which prohibit protests. The demands were forcefully submitted, and the administration’s response is now awaited. On February 19, several students of Jamia, alongside other student groups such as the All Indian Student’s Association and the Jawaharlal Nehru University Student’s Union continued the protest at Jantar Mantar.

When I last spoke to her, Kulsum had become weary of the administration’s swift use of the law to suppress expression. “The balance between freedom and decorum is not about suppressing one for the other. It is about recognizing that the very act of suppression – whether through fines, censorship, or removal of works – undermines the essence of freedom itself,” she explained, “Rather than maintaining decorum at the cost of creative and intellectual expression, the administration should seek a more inclusive, democratic way of allowing these voices to be heard while also respecting the need for shared public spaces.”

(Maryam Hassan is a Delhi-based freelance journalist. She writes on human rights and minority issues. Courtesy: The Leaflet, an independent platform for cutting-edge, progressive, legal & political opinion, founded by Indira Jaising and Anand Grover.)

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Suspended, Detained and Insulted: Here’s How Jamia Students are Fighting for Their Right to Protest

Hajara Najeeb

“I was carried by a male and a female guard, my body exposed. I was screaming and asking them to at least let me fix my clothes,” said a protesting student who was suspended from the university and detained by the police.

On the wee hours of February 13, 14 students who were protesting inside gate seven of Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) in Delhi were woken up while they were sleeping in front of the central canteen and forcibly carried by security guards of the institute under the guidance of the chief security officer of the university Syed Abdul Rasheed.

They were then handed over to the Delhi Police who were inside the campus near another gate. Later, the students were detained at different stations in Delhi for almost 12 hours without being informed of any grounds for detention and access to lawyers.

These 14 students were part of a sit-in protest which commenced on February 10 in front of the central canteen in the university. They were demanding the revoking of the disciplinary action against four students – Saurabh, Jyoti, Fuzail Shabbar and Niranjan – who were targeted for organising an event, remembrance day, on December 16 to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the police crackdown on the university campus during the protests against Citizenship (Amendment) Act-National Register of Citizens (CAA-NRC) on December 15, 2019.

“The guards came from three sides. While I was sleeping, I was picked up by my hair. I woke up to the male guards pulling my leg, they did not allow us to even wear our slippers. I was carried by a male and a female guard, my body exposed. I was screaming and asking them to at least let me fix my clothes. The more I was resisting, the more aggressive they became,” said U.R. Uthara, first year MA Sociology student who was among the 14 students who were detained by the police and later suspended from the university.

The events that led to the protest

The students sought permission from the proctor’s office to organise an event to mark the remembrance day on December 15. However, they were denied permission.

They organised the event the next day (December 16) after the classes at 5.30 pm, it started with a march, which commenced and ended at the central canteen. Next, students gave speeches highlighting the police brutality that happened in 2019 and threw light on the ongoing fascist attack on educational institutions. The event lasted for about an hour.

On December 17, one of the organisers of the event, Saurabh, a PhD scholar in the Department of Hindi and a member of All India Students Association (AISA) received a show cause notice from the proctor’s office, in which it was stated that the event had a “malafide political agenda” and it “paralyses academic spaces”.

However, Saurabh refuted the claims of the university administration.

“There is no malafide political agenda. The police crackdown on December 15, 2019 was a brutal attack on the entire university, we did not have any individual political agenda,” Saurabh told The Wire. Subsequently, he sent a 16-page letter to the administration on December 20 which they deemed “unsatisfactory”.

Following this, he received a notice on February 3, informing that a disciplinary committee would be formed to take action against him with no mention of a date for the same.

“By then, we understood that we were being rusticated. They had completely butchered our rights as students,” said Jyoti, also a PhD scholar in the Department of Hindi and a member of Dayar-I-Shauq Students’ Charter (DISSC).

On February 10, a sit-in protest was organised in response to the action taken by the administration against Saurabh. A day prior to this (February 9), three other students – Jyoti, Fuzail, a first year B.Tech in computer engineering and member of DISSC and Niranjan, a fourth year law student and member of All India Revolutionary Students Organisation (AIRSO) — also received notices for disciplinary action.

“By this time, it was necessary to start the protest because there are many students being affected by these futile show-cause notices for gatherings. They demand that we take permission for every event and later reject every single one of them. That’s the situation of the campus now,” says Jyoti.

According to a memorandum released by the university registrar on August 29, 2022 “no meeting/gathering of students shall be allowed in any part of the campus without prior permission of the proctor, failing which disciplinary action shall be taken against the erring students.”

Another memorandum released on November 29 last year states that “no protests, dharnas, raising slogans against any constitutional dignitaries shall be allowed in any part of the university campus.” Along with this, there is a fine ranging up to Rs 50,000 for graffiti and postering in the campus premises.

“When we sought permission to hold a study circle during the International Day for Solidarity for the Palestine People, the administration denied it. We had to resort to distributing pamphlets. Still we received calls asking us not to engage in such activities. There is no freedom to organise anything in the campus,” said Mishkat Tehrim, a first year student of MA Sociology, who was detained and later suspended.

The right to organise and gather is part of the six freedoms in Article 19. However, the brutal state repression and militarisation has curtailed the rights of the students in the university.

Along with this, the presence of police inside the campus raises serious questions about the safety of the students. “This is not the first time the police entered the campus. It happened in 2019 during the anti-CAA NRC protests. At this point, it is not very surprising the police were already inside the campus,” said Uthara.

‘Want our democratic space back’

“The students were taken from the central canteen area, harassed by the guards and were handed over to 50-60 police officers who were waiting inside gate four. They deliberately took us out through gate four because there are no cameras there,” Jyoti said, recalling the ordeal that they had to face on February 13.

The students were then shoved into three buses, and taken to three different stations – Kalkaji, Badarpur and Bawana.

“We had asked them to take us together. When they denied, we requested to at least put the female students together according to the protocol. This was also denied,” said Uthara, who was taken along with Mishkat, Sajahan Ali, both first year MA Sociology students and members of AISA, and another male student to the Kalkaji police station.

When other students and media reached Kalkaji station, they were not allowed to meet the detained individuals and their whereabouts were also not revealed.

At around 10 am, when more people gathered outside Kalkaji station, these students were taken to Fatehpur Beri station, in the pretext of taking them back to the campus. They were kept there till 4 pm in the evening, denied access to their lawyers even after multiple requests.

Along with this, the students were forced to sign documents – contents of which they couldn’t read – as they were threatened that they would not be released unless they signed it. “Our parents were also called to coerce us to sign those documents,” Mishkat said.

The students underlined that they were “treated like criminals, physically and verbally harassed by the police officers.” For instance, Habeeba, who was detained in the Badarpur police station, was allegedly slapped by a police officer for resisting to give her phone.

Another detainee, who did not wish to be named, has said that Islamophic slurs were directed at him, such as “yeh musalmaan log sirf dange fasaad karte hain (These Muslims create riots and fights everywhere).”

This wasn’t all. The administration has been using various measures to dismantle and disrupt the sit-in protests.

On the first night of the protest on February 10, authorities cut off the electricity in the campus, closed the washrooms and shut off the canteen area. Along with this, the vice chancellor, Mazhar Asif has allegedly denied holding any dialogue with the students.

On February 11, the parents of these protesting students were called by police officers and they instructed them to ask their children to withdraw from the protests. “This means the administration has shared our numbers with the police,” says Mishkat.

“The day before detaining [us], the Jamia Nagar police called my father asking him to coerce me to back out from the protests. He runs an auto-rickshaw in Kolkata, receiving multiple calls from the police threatening that an FIR would be booked against his son and he will be expelled from college was to frighten him and to intimidate me,” says Sajahan.

On February 12, the night before the detention, seven students including Sajahan received suspension letters for a clash which happened 800 metres away from the protest site.

Posters by AISA in Jamia Millia Islamia university campus during the recent protests.

Now, all the 17 students involved in the sit-in protests have been suspended. The reasons cited in one of the suspension letters include “leading an unruly and rowdy group of individuals to vandalise and deface the university’s property, disrupting the normal functioning of the campus, creating ruckus inside the campus, creating gross inconvenience to other students and defacing university property.”

“Suspension cannot happen in isolation,” says Uthara adding, “there is a due process for it. You should receive a show-cause notice. With the reply being unsatisfactory, a disciplinary committee will be looking into the issue and they will decide whether a suspension is necessary and if yes, the details of it.”

However, in this case none of that has happened. “Normally suspension lasts for two weeks. In the letters we received, no time is mentioned. They can suspend me again if I attempt to enter the campus after two weeks” she adds.

After the detained students were released on February 14, posters displaying their name, phone numbers, email IDs and political affiliations with the seal of the university were pasted inside gate seven, eight and 13 of the institute.

In an official statement, the university refuted this allegation saying that “some individuals and anti-social elements have been attempting to defame the image of the university and its students by spreading misleading, defamatory and malicious messages.”

The statement has put the blame on the protesting students for spreading the personal information and said it “condemns such brazen and irresponsible acts.”

Sonakshi Gupta, another student who got suspended has been receiving calls and messages from unknown numbers since her name and number were displayed on the posters.

“If the university is not responsible for this, how did their seal come in those posters?” asked Sajahan, in a press conference jointly organised by different student political parties of JMI on February 16 at the Press Club of India.

Apart from revoking of the suspension, the students have put forward five other demands in the press conference, which includes “an immediate end to the issuance of show cause notices to students exercising their fundamental rights, revocation of all show-cause notices issued to students for raising their voices, repealing of the official memorandum dated August 29, 2022 and November 29, 2024, an end to the witch-hunt against students for expressing dissent and withdrawal of the notice penalising postering and graffiti on Jamia walls.”

The press conference organised by the suspended students saw large scale participation by students from various educational institutions and political organisations.

Underlining how “democratic spaces” are shrinking in university campuses, Jyoti pointed out, “We want our democratic spaces back. If the administration has a problem with the political culture of the university, they can resign. Or else they need to ensure the freedom and safety of the students.”

As students from various departments of the university have released solidarity statements in support of the suspended students, the classes in JMI were also boycotted on February 17. However, the administration has been actively working to suppress any kind of resistance and voices in support of the suspended students.

“The registrar, Mehtab Alam Rizvi has said that if somebody boycotts classes on the [February] 17th, the entire class would be suspended. What kind of authoritarianism is this,” asks Jyothi.

The boycott, however, saw huge participation from students with classrooms remaining empty. On the same day, the students submitted a memorandum to the dean of student welfare demanding the immediate revoking of all suspension letters with an ultimatum of 48 hours.

(Hajara Najeeb is a researcher based in Delhi. Courtesy: The Wire, an Indian nonprofit news and opinion website. It was founded in 2015 by Siddharth Varadarajan, Sidharth Bhatia, and M. K. Venu.)