Haryana: Rohtak Police Used Water Cannons on Protesting MBBS Students Ahead of CM's Visit

Rohtak: Police allegedly used water cannons on MBBS students of Rohtak PGI and forcibly removed them. The students were protesting on the institute campus against the imposition of Rs 36 lakh bond fees by the state government.

As per students, around 200 of them, including girls, "were rounded by the police around 2 am. They were made to board police buses and taken away from the PGI campus."

A student said that "the policemen used water cannons and then started dragging the students sitting on dharna towards the buses." Haryana police did not even spare girl students from rough treatment as all of them were dragged, pulled, and lifted onto the buses.

The crackdown happened hours before the Governor, Chief Minister, and Home Minister were supposed to visit the PGI campus "for the convocation of Pt Bhagwat Dayal Sharma University of Health Sciences, Rohtak."

As per a report by The Tribune, "the venue of the convocation is a stone's throw from the site where the students had been staging a protest for the past four days."

Rohtak Superintendent of Police Udai Singh Meena said that the police have resided against some of the protesting MBBS students, while a few others have been detained as a preventive measure.

"On Friday night, the students shifted the venue of their protest from the PGI director's office to the auditorium where the Governor, Chief Minister and Home Minister are scheduled to attend a convocation ceremony on Saturday. Officials of Pt Bhagwat Dayal Sharma University of Health Sciences, police and district administration tried to convince the students not to stage a protest near the auditorium for security reasons, but they remained adamant. Hence, we had to detain/arrest them," Meena said.