Alleging that four of the organisers had molested female students, the left-leaning students affiliated to FETSU confined them inside the campus.
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The students alleged the outsiders molested the two girls which they denied strongly.
Jadavpur campus was on a boil on Friday after rival group of students clashed over the screening of Vivek Agnihotri-directed political film Buddha in a Traffic Jam.
Referring to a letter from the JU Alumni Association which said the screening was cancelled “due to model code of conduct prevailing due to state assembly elections”, Agnihotri dubbed it “a lame excuse”.
According to reports, some girls were also molested by “outsiders” and later a complaint was filed against them.
Earlier in the day, Agnihotri also tweeted, “I reached Kolkata in the morning for the screening of#BuddhaInATrafficJam at Jadavpur Univ but they cancelled it. Pl support our FoE”.
Following this, Vice-Chancellor Suranjan Das reportedly handed over the “detained” students to the ABVP supporters waiting outside the gate, he added.
Meanwhile, as producers went ahead with the screening of Buddha in a Traffic Jam at an open-air space in the campus, Agnihotri – who was reportedly welcomed at the JU gates with black flags, sloganeering and placards asking him to leave – claimed he was manhandled and gheraoed by students, leaving the glass pane of his vehicle shattered. “And then our people will take one minute to climb the gates and enter the campus”, said BJP leader Debasree Chowdhury. “ABVP students organised the screening like a political rally. The authorities should take stern action against it”, Tripathi, who is also the chancellor of the university, told PTI. While “Buddha in A Traffic Jam” is a critique of a management student who becomes an overnight sensation after a social media campaign against radical fundamentalism of moral policing in India, “Muzaffarnagar Baaqi Hai” is on the Muzaffarnagar riots. “We will talk to the alumni association”, said Das.
“The students arranged a bedsheet and turned it into a screen to see my film”. Not only in Kolkata, the film was asked to stop even in Delhi where the film’s main lead Anupam Kher was watching the show. Many watched it and realised it is not what they were thinking. “We are protesting against that”, said Sounak Mukherjee, a first year MA student of English Department.
Even as the screening was going on in the evening, after classes were over, the agitators carried on with demonstration near the spot. “We wanted to let everyone have their say, instead of clamping down on a divergent points of view”, he said.
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Undeterred by the news of the cancellation, the director made a decision to go ahead with screening the film on campus, where faced massive protests from the students.
