The SFI march to the West Hill Engineering College, Kozhikode to to protest the admission of Nirmal Madhav became a street war on Monday with a senior cop opening fire at the agitators and over 72 persons including the SFI state secretary, P. Biju, suffering injuries in clashes.

The clash between the students and the police turned the West Hill area in the city into a battlefield for nearly three hours on Monday morning.

The SFI took out a march in the morning after Nirmal Madhav entered the college with police protection. The SFI had been alleging that he got admission after violating norms. The college was closed for almost two months due to the SFI strike.

Clashes broke out as soon as Biju addressed the activists who laid siege to the college at around 9 a.m. protesting the entry of Madhav. Police swooped down on the agitators and lathi charged them. Biju suffered a severe head injury in the lathi charge.

Angry SFI workers then threw stones at the police who retorted by firing tear gas shells. After a while, assistant commissioner of police K. Radhakrishna Pillai arrived and fired four rounds from his service revolver at the agitators. However, nobody was injured. The ACP later justified his firing and said he had done it as per the order of the Kozhikode tahsildar, who is also the executive magistrate.

Biju, who was injured seriously, was later admitted at Medical College Hospital, Kozhikode. As many as 40 police personnel and 30 SFI members suffered injuries in the clashes. Two parents and a photographer were also injured. State Human Rights Commission member Gangadharan visited the area and said that there was no need for the police to open fire at the agitators.

CPI(M) state secretary, Pinarayi Vijayan condemned the police action and said that it was sheer luck that nobody was injured. Opposition leader V.S. Achuthanandan, also warned that the government would not be able to continue for long if it handled student agitations in this manner.

Student takes on SFI, suffers

Engineering student Nirmal Madhav is still paying for crossing swords with the powerful Students’ Federation of India.

Nirmal’s confrontation with the SFI started when he submitted a complaint against the organisation to the principal of the Calicut University Engineering College where he was admitted to the mechanical branch in 2009. He had to discontinue his study at the self financing college directly managed by the Calicut University.

Though he was admitted to College of Engineering, Punnapra, for the third semester the subsequent year, he was hounded out of the college by the SFI.

Though he had petitioned the then Chief Minister, Mr V.S. Achuthanandan, and Mr A. Pradeep Kumar MLA of the CPI(M), he was unable to continue his studies, apparently because of the intervention by the SFI.

Following the change of government, he approached the Chief Minister, Mr Oommen Chandy. He was given admission to Government Engineering College, Kozhikode, situated at West Hill three months ago. The SFI immediately launched an agitation.

“There is no precedence where a student admitted to self financing college is transferred to government engineering college,” said the SFI state president, Mr K.V.Sumesh.Nirmal’s rank was as low as 22,787, while the last rank admitted to Government Engineering College, Kozhikode, was 1,316, he said.

However, Nirmal Madhav said students of self financing engineering college had been transferred to government engineering college in the past also. He said he was going to the college with the permission of High Court.