Hawk: AMUSU General Secretary Farrukh Khan speaks to reporters at JNU

Hafeez Gandhi, president of AMUSU, had told Farah to proceed with her campaign if she wanted to be another Bhanwari Devi

On the morning of February 2, Farah Aziz, a journalism student at Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), was going to her department on a cycle-rickshaw with two friends when two unidentified boys on a motorcycle snatched her scarf, saying, “Aaj dupatta kaise odha?” (How come you are wearing a dupatta today?)

Farah regained her calm, went to the Indira Gandhi Hostel for women post-graduate students, told others what had happened, and spoke of the need to protest against such incidents on campus. A group of 30-40 girls and some boys met the vice-chancellor and demanded a lasting solution to the problem. “We requested that a women’s cell as ordered by the Supreme Court be activated and empowered to deal with the issues concerning women on campus. The vice-chancellor advised me to focus on what had happened to me,” Farah Aziz said.

She was asked to file an fir with the police, and Vice-Chancellor Naseem Ahmad promised action. Couple of days later, a police van swooped down the University Road which runs through the AMU campus. Not surprisingly, the police could come up with no leads given that Farah had no idea who had snatched her dupatta.

Nor was there any follow-up on Farah Aziz’s request to the vice-chancellor to reactivate the women’s cell and turn it into an effective body. She had pointed out to him that the term of the cell’s chairperson had expired in the previous month, but her successor was yet to be appointed. As the registrar of the university, law professor Faizan Mustafa is the ex-officio convener of the women’s cell but he admitted to a student delegation that he was not even aware of this.

In fact, it became clear to Farah that the university authorities were not particularly keen on reviving the women’s cell when she spoke to the proctor about it. He told her that if she persisted with her campaign, he could invoke against her the university rule which debars a student with less than 75 percent class attendance — a category she falls in — from appearing in exams.

Farah and her friends, who are members of a Left-leaning student body, Struggle Against Alienation and Discrimination (sada), posted group mails on the Internet about the incident. On February 4, she was summoned by the AMU Students Union (AMUSU) for a meeting, where she claims she was threatened and abused by AMUSU office bearers.

Farah and her friends then contacted a television channel and a women’s group affiliated with the Communist Party India (CPI). As soon as the television crew stepped outside the Arts Faculty building where they had interviewed Farah, a mob led by student-politician Nafees Ahmed attacked the cameraman and snatched the film of the interview. They also beat her friend Nadeem Haider.

Then, on February 9, Farah Aziz and Nadeem Haider surfaced at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi where they addressed a crowded press conference. Farah was in a defiant mood. The AMU students union was attempting to impose an unofficial dress code on female students, she told the assembled media persons, and they had threatened her for highlighting the issue of gender inequality on campus. “Farrukh Khan, the general secretary of the AMU students union told me that he would go to any extent to stop my campaign. (He told me that) he had many criminal cases against him, (and) that I deserved what had happened to me because I wore jeans and T-shirts,” said Farah. She claimed that Hafeez Gandhi, president of AMUSU, had told her to proceed with her campaign if she wanted to become another Bhanwari Devi — alluding to the famous case of the dalit woman who was raped and brutalised by upper-caste men for standing up for her rights.