Professor beaten up on University of Peshawar (UoP) campus

PESHAWAR: Some activists of Tariq Afghan-led Azad Pakhtun Students Federation (APkSF) Friday allegedly beat up and injured a senior professor of the University of Peshawar.

Prof Faqeera Khan Faqri, director, Institute of Urdu and Persian Languages, was taken to the nearby Hayat Shaheed Teaching Hospital for medical treatment after the thrashing.Police registered the first information report and arrested the three students nominated as the accused in the case. “The three students forced their way into office of the professor and started beating him. They also hurled abuses at the professor,” an official of the institute told The News.

The students, arrested by the campus police on the indication of the injured professor, included Asadullah Mayar, a drop-out of Persian department, Arbab Mir Afzal and Irfan Khan of sociology department.

The activists of APkSF, which is a splinter group of the Awami National Party-affiliated Pakhtun Student Federation, wanted to secure admission for their colleague Asadullah Mayar in the final year at the Persian department for which he was not qualified, the official said.

This was not the first time these students visited the office of Prof Faqeera Khan. They had gone there several times to put pressure on him for the admission of their colleague, the official said.

Talking to The News by phone, Prof Faqeera Khan said that Asadullah had failed the previous year examination. He said the student had not taken admission in the final year and had not attended any class and despite this was persistently asking him to give him admission for which he was not qualified. “How could I give him admission when he didn’t meet the required criteria,” the professor said.

The university administration downplayed the incident by terming the students as outsiders. “It is purely a police case and we condemn it,” a university official told reporters. The teachers and students of the university, however, condemned the incident and urged the university administration to take immediate and stern action against the culprits. “If the university administration wants to keep the campus peaceful, it should take prompt action against the accused, otherwise the vice-chancellor would be responsible for any untoward incident,” a senior professor told The News.

He ridiculed the university stance that the accused students were outsiders, saying that it was the responsibility of the university administration to provide protection to the teachers. “This shows that the administration wanted to bail out the students who have already been arrested by police,” he argued.