The Jawaharlal Nehru University administration has issued a notice and imposed a fine of Rs 20,000 on the former president of the JNU Students' Union, Geeta Kumari, for a protest she allegedly participated in more than a year ago, on May 18, 2018.
The university also warned her "to be careful and not to get involved in such incidents in the future". Geeta, who is now pursuing her PhD in Modern History at JNU after completing here postgraduation at the university, said that this is only an attempt to dampen the ongoing protests at the varsity. "I have more than 30 such warning letters from the administration for participating in protests but I was called to a deposition only once. Neither did the administration let us talk there nor did they call us back for another session after I asked them to let me cross-question the witnesses who said that I was involved," said Geeta. "This is just a random attempt at crippling our resistance against the unacceptable changes the administration wants to implement," she added.
The All India Students' Association (AISA) also issued a statement that condemned the action taken against Geeta. "The JNU community has been resisting the policy of 'Shutdown JNU' of Mamidala Jagdesh Kumar since his inception in the University," read the statement. "At a time, when JNU students have been fighting to save their cultural and social spaces like PSR, JNUSU office, standing tall against the draconian hostel manual, the JNU administration is targeting the student activists, present and former JNUSU office-bearers, in a specious bid to create chilling effect and destabilise our movement and unity
They also appealed to all the students to "fight back this witch hunt and repression and standby every student who is being targeted and assert that this is a movement of 8,500 students". "We should assert what JNU stands for, hold high the banner of affordable, accessible and quality education," they said.
