Bhubaneswar: Commissionerate Police Thursday arrested five more staffers of the KIIT University on the charges of assaulting Nepali students during their forceful eviction from the University campus in Bhubaneswar Monday.
The accused persons, identified as Ajaya Kumar Swain (46), Saroj Kumar Routray (45), Chandan Kumar Swain (29), Sudhansusekhar Behera (41), and Ramakanta Sethi (37) are the employees of the KIIT university.
The police in a press statement said that February 17 when the students were vacating the hostel and University campus, the accused persons and other staff suddenly reached there and asked the students to vacate the place immediately.
The police further added that the accused persons got enraged when they noticed the students were delaying in vacating the hostel. They hurled abuses at the students and assaulted them.
“Following a thorough examination of the CCTV footage of the incident of attack, the police apprehended the accused and forwarded them to court. The court on the basis of the evidence produced by the police rejected their bail pleas and sent them to judicial custody,” said the Bhubaneswar Police Thursday.
Earlier, the city police had arrested five persons including three senior directors and two security guards of the University on Tuesday.
The police later came under fire after the accused persons managed to get bail from the court on the very same day.
On the other hand, the Odisha Higher Education Department on Thursday asked KIIT University founder Achyuta Samanta to appear before the High Level Committee February 21 for enquiry into the alleged suicide of the female Nepali student Prakriti Lamsal and subsequent mistreatment meted out against students by the authorities of the University.
He has also been asked to all the necessary produce documents related to the incident. Notably, the deceased Prakriti, a third-year BTech (Computer Science) student of the KIIT University ended her life on Sunday following continued harassment by her estranged boyfriend Advik Shrivastava, a student of B.Tech (Mechanical).
After the news of her death came to fore, the students staged a protest demanding justice for the deceased.
This irked the University authorities who asked all the Nepali students to leave the University campus immediately. The authorities of the private university even forcefully evicted the students from the campus and also allegedly assaulted them on Monday.
IANS
