I hang my head in shame, said the Students' Federation of India's National President V P Sanu, following the shocking stabbing of an SFI member by another one of his SFI comrades inside a Thiruvananthapuram college. Sanu's response has been unsubtle and assertive to the point of it being surprising almost — he has decided to disband the SFI unit in question. "The accused will be suspended from the organisation soon. We do not support any sort of violence," Sanu tells us, strongly condemning the incident. "We are also suspending the college's SFI unit for now. The state representatives of SFI are visiting Akhil at the hospital. I'll meet them soon," he said.
"I apologise to the people of Kerala. Our weapon is not the dagger that was stabbed on Abhimanyu's chest, but the slogans that he wrote and said out loud," Sanu wrote on his Facebook wall on Thursday. On Friday, Akhil, a III year BA History student of University College, Thiruvananthapuram was stabbed by the college's SFI Unit Secretary Nazeem and president Sivanjith. Akhil too is a member of the student political organisation. Sanu's post was in response to the incident and the events that followed.
On Friday afternoon, a knife was reportedly thrust into Akhil's chest. Three other students too were injured in the incident. Akhil was immediately rushed to the Thiruvananthapuram Medical College. The accused are currently absconding. "We will never justify mistakes. We will not protect criminals. We are not tired. We need correction, not justification. We must reform ourselves and do penance to history. Also, do justice to our martyrs," his Facebook post reads.
The events that followed the incident were rather dramatic. A Facebook page called SFI Thiruvananthapuram had put up a post alleging foul play. The post said that the incident was orchestrated by right-leaning students and that Akhil stabbed himself with a pen and made a huge deal out of it. The post ended with a threatening note which vaguely translates to, "We live in a Kerala ruled by Comrade Pinarayi Vijayan. The ones who raise their voice against us must remember this."
Following this, Sanu wrote a post saying that the statement isn't SFI's and that the organisation is nowhere related to the page. "This is run by someone whose aim is to deface us. I have seen similar attempts when I contested in the Lok Sabha election," he says.
