The Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers' Association (JNUTA) Thursday alleged security lapses on the campus and said that thefts have occurred in the houses of faculty members despite guards being present in the vicinity.
They also accused the vice-chancellor of rewarding the security agency with a renewal of their contract despite these incidents. They alleged that a robbery on the intervening night of December 6 and 7 in the house of a faculty member who is abroad on leave was just the latest instance of the spate of robberies on the campus.
His partner who has stayed back because of academic commitments had left the house in the evening and the security guard on duty had witnessed her departure, the JNUTA statement said. “It is odd that the entire house was ransacked, and all valuables were stolen that very night.
Another faculty member's bunch of keys was stolen from his car as he stepped onto the house porch to offload a package. “This rendered the faculty member's family deeply vulnerable till they were able to replace all locks. Once again, the security guard was very much present in the vicinity when this theft transpired,” the statement claimed.
They claimed that thefts have occurred in the houses of faculty members who have informed the security in advance of their absence from campus. Thefts have occurred when faculty members have left campus for short periods and even when faculty members have left their houses to take classes during the day, they claimed.
They said that since 2019, when the university administration hired Cyclops, an agency that advertises its recruits as a "Corpus of highly skilled, trained and dedicated Ex Servicemen and private security personnel", the campus security has only deteriorated. “The only time that university members see the Cyclops security service in action is when their guards flank the Vice Chancellor in his public performances of ‘leadership’,” the statement said.
“Other than that, one only sees them when the administration instrumentalizes them to intimidate students, campus workers and faculty members, to implement the administration's highhanded policies," it said. "It is clear that a security service drawn out from a cadre of ex-servicemen does not have the experience or the sensitivity to function within a civilian context,” they added.
-With PTI Inputs
