Pune, Aug. 19 : In a midnight crackdown at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), 5 students were arrested by the police after the institute’s director, Prashant Pathrabe lodged a complaint against them for detaining him on campus on Monday.”Patrabe has complained that they have created chaos in his office and that the students didn’t allow him to go out of the office and damaged the internal property of the office. We received the complaint on Tuesday night and action has been taken. The arrested will appear in the court on Wednesday morning,” Pravin Chougule, Sr. Police Inspector, Deccan PS said.The students have been charged with obstructing a public servant from doing his duty, a non-bailable offence, and six other charges including destruction of property, punishment for voluntarily causing hurt, criminal intimidation, rioting, wrongful restraint and unlawful assembly.”This is the most unfortunate thing that can happen in any educational institution. The students asked a question and they did not get a satisfactory answer. The police came and a meeting was held in front of the police and media. Some kind of statements were made, so that was all in the public domain,” Debkamal Ganguly, Associate Professor Film Directions said.On Monday, the students had held the director back in his cabin for nearly seven hours, refusing to let him go till their concerns were addressed. The director and registrar called in the police at 10 pm, after which students claim they were mistreated and manhandled.
“It was not the protest, students were only asking for the answer. Instead the police misbehaved with the Students, we have the video,” Ankita Gupta, a student of FTII said, The students have been objecting to the assessment of the projects of the 2008 batch students. They claim that only 50 per cent of the 2008 batch students had completed their projects and the faculty had asked the administration to put the assessment on hold till the strike was over.
Information and Broadcasting Ministry to send three-member team to FTII tomorrow
The Information and Broadcasting Ministry will send a three-member team of officers to the FTII on Thursday to assess the ground situation following the midnight crackdown on protesting students by the police.The three-member team headed by the Director General of Registrar of Newspapers for India (RNI) will submit a report to the Information and Broadcasting Ministry after carefully gauging the situation at the institute.Academic activity in FTII is at a standstill with the students’ adamant on their demand that BJP member and TV actor Gajendra Chauhan should be removed as the institute’s chairman.The Congress Party has backed the students as their protest entered the 70th day on Wednesday.