As the Supreme Court heard petitions on the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protests on Tuesday, 17 December, English news channel Times Now ran a story quoting Solicitor General Tushar Mehta as saying that the proctor of Jamia Milia Islamia had permitted Delhi Police to enter the campus on Sunday.
This comes after students of the university alleged that police officers on Sunday entered the campus without the permission of the university authorities and started firing tear gas. Dozens of students were detained from the campus and at least 60 – including students and police – got injured in the ruckus.
CLAIM
In the Times Now bulletin, the reporter could be heard saying, “When we spoke to him (Jamia proctor) on the day the incident happened, he told us that that he hadn’t given any permission to the police. But after today's court proceedings, when the solicitor general said that the proctor had given permission for this, we spoke to the proctor Waseem Ahmed all over again.”
The archived version of the tweet can be viewed here.
WHAT DID SG TUSHAR MEHTA ACTUALLY SAY IN THE COURT?
The Quint’s legal editor Vakasha Sachdev was at the Supreme Court when the proceedings were going on and he clarified that the SG was referring to the AMU proctor while making the statement.
“It was the proctor of Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) who approached the local police after hearing rumours about deaths in Jamia,” our reporter added.
According to him, as far as Jamia proctor is concerned, Mehta said that he had only gone to the police stations in Delhi after reports of students being detained surfaced.
Times Now reached out to Jamia proctor for his reaction on Mehta’s “allegations”. To this, ANI quoted him as saying, “These are baseless allegations. I was the first to condemn police's barbaric behaviour after entering the campus without permission”.
Further, the Jamia proctor released a statement dismissing the “allegations made by SG Mehta” and said that Delhi Police entered the campus of the varsity “without the permission of any JMI Official including Chief Proctor.”
On Sunday, too, Waseem Khan had told ANI that Delhi Police had entered the campus of the university without permission and beat up students and staff.
Evidently, media outlets like Times Now and Mirror Now misreported what Mehta said.
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