Yogendra Yadav, allegedly manhandled at JNU, says police stood by during attack

Swaraj Abhiyan chief Yogendra Yadav on Sunday accused Jawaharlal Nehru University vice-chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar of indifference, after Yadav was allegedly manhandled outside the JNU campus after the students’ union clashed with the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP).

Yadav’s charges

Yadav said the vice-chancellor had overseen the intellectual and now the physical destruction of the university, and should leave “if there is any shame left in him”. He questioned how an outside group got into a campus that normally has strict entry rules, and said any other vice-chancellor would have protected students and publicly highlighted what was happening.

He also said police deployed at the campus had stood by instead of controlling the situation. “If the police is afraid, they can take out their uniform,” he said. Yadav claimed the attack was planned, not spontaneous, citing screenshots of a WhatsApp group named ‘Friends of RSS’ that, he said, showed members planning to gather outside JNU.

“Nothing like this before”

Yadav said he had known the campus for 37 years. Police had entered JNU once before, in 1982, he recalled, but he had never seen outsiders attack a campus while it was under police protection.

The clash

According to sources, members of the JNU students’ union and the ABVP clashed in the evening during a public meeting organised by the teachers’ association. Students’ union president Aishe Ghosh and several students and teachers were hurt in alleged stone-pelting by ABVP members. The ABVP, which is backed by the RSS, alleged that its own members had been badly beaten by Left-linked student groups and that 25 of them were injured.

See also: Political leaders

Originally published on 6 January 2020. Rewritten on 9 October 2026.

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