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Suspended students bound to file written defence within three days
LAHORE: The Punjab University (PU) administration taking a stern action against the miscreant elements responsible for the clashes and riots in the varsity, started sending show-cause notices to the suspended students in their lockups on Friday, Pakistan Today has learnt.
According to the details, the department of students’ affairs sent show-cause notices having a detailed charge-sheet to 37 of the suspended students of the varsity and all the notices were served to the students in their relevant lockups where they were sent on judicial remand by an Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) of Lahore.
The show-cause notices available with Pakistan Today have charged the students for disrupting the honour, prestige and dignity of the university during the clashes that took place on Monday and Tuesday among the activists of the Islami Jamiat Talaba (IJT) and students of the Pakhtun Baloch Union.
The students have also been charged with ‘spreading chaos in the campus while also setting ablaze and damaging the university instalments at the Electrical Engineering Department’. The charge-sheet against the students further reads that a sense of fear prevailed in the campus especially among the female students during the clashes.
The students to whom the notices were served are enrolled in the Department of Gender Studies, Institute of Communication Studies, Institute of Social and Cultural Studies, Department of Political Science, Institute of Education and Research, Punjab University Law College, Sheikh Zayed Islamic Centre, Institute of Chemical Engineering and Technology, Department of Physics, Institute of Business Administration, Department of Space Science, Institute of Biochemistry and Biotechnology, Institute of Geology and the Hailey College of Commerce to name a few.
The suspended students have been directed to submit their written defence within three days through their concerned department heads. Later, the disciplinary committee would start visiting the suspended students in their lockups to record their statements where they would be asked on what basis they should not be expelled from the university.
It may be noted that as many as 196 students of the Punjab University were presented in front of the Anti-Terrorism Court on Wednesday and were sent on judicial remand for 14 days while the physical remand of 13 students was given to the Muslim Town police station where the first information reports (FIRs) of the unrest and clashes were launched. These students were charged with destroying the property of the university and vandalising several vehicles including two police mobiles and five motorbikes during the scuffle on Monday earlier this week.
The university is bound to take a decision regarding the fate of the suspended students within 15 days otherwise their suspension would be overturned. The administration is taking actions against the miscreants hyperactively following the directives from Chief Minister Punjab Shahbaz Sharif who ordered the Vice Chancellor Dr Zakria Zakar and Provincial Minister for Higher Education Raza Ali Gillani to take prompt actions in order to ensure the law and order in the country’s largest and oldest public sector university.