BJP’s Roopa Ganguly Stopped From Entering Jadavpur University

Jadavpur: Women were allegedly molested and BJP leader Roopa Ganguly was blocked from entering Jadavpur University in Kolkata after student factions clashed over the screening of a controversial Bollywood film on Friday night.

Students from Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, which is affiliated to the RSS, and activists of Left-backed student unions allegedly fought with each other over the campus screening of Vivek Agnihotri’s film Buddha In A Traffic Jam.

Alleging that four of the organizers had molested female students, the left-leaning students affiliated to FETSU confined them inside the campus.

Tension increased after dusk as ABVP activists collected outside the university gate and shouted slogans demanding the four be rescued and handed over to them.

Ganguly, an actress-turned-politician, filed a complaint at the Jadavpur police station that the four people--invited for the screening of the award-winning film--were beaten up and wrongly confined on a false accusation.

“We have come to take the four of our invitees safely home. They have been beaten up. They are in a bad condition. We will wait for ten minutes. And then our people will take one minute to climb the gates and enter the campus,” said BJP leader Debasree Chowdhury.

As the situation threatened to go out of control, with a huge collapsible gate separating the BJP-ABVP activists and the students, Vice Chancellor Suranjan Das rushed to the university in a taxi and pleaded with the two sides to maintain peace.

Das met the students a number of times but his attempts to bring the four out failed twice. He finally succeeded on his third attempt as the registrar and other officials with the help of the security personnel brought them out of the campus.

Buddha In A Traffic Jam deals with corruption and Maoism in a business school. It had attracted controversy when its screening was sought to be cancelled at JNU due to the volatile atmosphere there in the wake of the sedition charges levelled against some students.

However, the film was later screened in JNU with Kher, a critic of the students’ agitation, in attendance.