Police used tear gas and resorted to baton charge to disperse students of the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) who were marching to register a police complaint against Hindu groups that had barged into campus to protest the presence of a portrait of Pakistan’s founding leader Quid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, local media reported on Wednesday.
The students then staged a sit-in against the treatment meted out to them by police, Hindustan Times reported.
The paper reported that the The Hindu groups allegedly shouted slogans against the Quaid-e-Azam and asked the university to remove the portrait at the Students’ Union Hall in 48 hours.
The controversy began when Satish Gautam, a ruling party lawmaker, wrote to AMU vice chancellor Tariq Mansoor seeking a justification for Jinnah’s portrait, which has been hanging at the university since 1938.
Mashkoor Ahmad Usmani, a student leader, said the portrait would not be removed saying it came up as part of a protocol that the AMU students’ union accorded to all great leaders of the then undivided India who had visited the campus.
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