Click to play videoAligarh: A destroyed office, the burnt residence of the Vice-Chancellor, damaged paintings — these are all the after-effects of the murder of Aligarh Muslim University student Mazhar Naeem on September 16.
The murder led to immediate shutdown of the university, the third in the last two years. Shockingly Mazhar's is the third murder of a student on the campus in five months and all the accused are university students.
The first victim was Mulla Sabir Ali, a BCom student who was shot on April 8 right outside the hostel.
Mohammad Salik Mazhar was killed 17 days later inside the petrochem engineering department, just days after he had secured a good job. Salik's friend and former roommate Zagram Ahmed says what hurts most is that the faculty is shielding the killers.
"My friend's body was lying in a pool of blood and a professor sitting some 12 meters away denied hearing any gun shots," says Zagram.
The police agree. They say there is factionalism in the 2,000 strong faculty. With pro and anti Vice-Chancellor groups facing-off on the campus, policing the campus becomes all the more difficult.
Says SSP, Aligarh, Raghuvir Lal, "They are using the students for their own benefit."
The Vice-Chancellor, P K Abdul Aziz, is a worried man, but looks upon the shutdown as an opportunity to rid the campus of undesirable elements.
"There seems to be a complicity within sections of the faculty and there is no zeal in weeding out the crime," says he.
When AMU was established, the ideal for it was to become a scene for Muslim empowerment and education in the country. Roughly 130 years down the line, the campus is a crime scene of three murders in the last five months.
As the administration grapples with a PR disaster, it's really up to the faculty and the students to work towards rebuilding the university if at all it is to regain its old glory.
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