Ticked off, RBU students beat staffer to death

KOLKATA: Campus hooliganism took a horrific turn at Rabindra Bharati University on Friday when a group of students, allegedly egged on by a professor, beat an elderly staff member to death because he admonished them for parking their bikes on the campus playground. The attack took place in front of the vice-chancellor’s office.Fifty-nine-year-old Basudeb Nandi, a heart patient, waskicked even after he fell to the ground unconscious. He was due to retire inseven months and had recently bought a house with his life’ssavings.The non-teaching staff caught hold of two of the suspectsand beat them up. Three others, including assistant professor Surajit Chandra,locked themselves in a room to escape the mob. All the accused are from thevisual arts department, where Nandi worked as a senior assistant.Theincident triggered a standoff between teaching and non-teaching staff who almostcame to blows in the presence of higher education minister Bratya Basu. Armedpolicemen have been deployed in the university that has a history of studentviolence, molestation and even a bomb attack on an MLA. Five students —Soubhik Biswas, Nilanjan Das, Sammohan Dey, Subhojit Das and Biswajit Halder— have been arrested along with Chandra.Around noon, Soubhik,a fourth-year student, entered the campus on his motorbike and parked it nearthe playground. Nandi asked him to go to the parking lot. This led to a quarrelas Soubhik’s friends joined in and attacked Nandi. It is alleged thatChandra stood there and “instigated the boys”. The studentsallegedly punched Nandi in the chest and kicked him even after he fell down, sayeyewitnesses.“Instead of stopping them, the teacher keptsaying that Nandi was faking the faint,” a member of the RBUworkers’ union said. Some of Nandi’s colleagues started chasing theboys and the teacher, who managed to lock himself in with three students in anacademic building. The crowd turned to the two other boys and thrashed themseverely before handing them to police. Nandi was taken to a nearby nursing homewhere he was declared dead. For at least two hours, the entirenon-teaching staff stood below the building where Chandra and the three studentshad taken cover, screaming for their blood. The police stood between them andthe gates, lest they break in and lynch the accused. “Tie them with ropesand parade them!” the mob demanded of the police. Three senior officers— special commissioner, Shivaji Ghosh, joint commissioner (armed police)Rajeev Mishra and DC (North) Sujay Chanda — spent at least three hourstrying to control the situation. Police were warned not to lathicharge thecrowd.Finally Chandra and the others were brought out under heavypolice protection and led away in a prison van. The mob screamed and banged onthe van as the police struggled to hold their line. Then, faction fights startedbetween the five non-teaching staff unions — two of them are backed byTrinamool Congress, one by the Left and two others that call themselvesapolitical. Nandi was secretary of one of these “apolitical”unions.