KARACHI: The Karachi University (KU) administration is yet to fix responsibility and punish the students involved in violence over a mixed-gender cricket match, though more than a month has passed since the incident, it emerged on Wednesday.

The violence that resulted in serious injuries to one male student also caused thrashing of some female students.

According to sources, the committee set up to probe the incident has held only one meeting so far and made no contact with students who were either beaten up, witnessed the violence or received threats after the incident.

The violence victims, they said, had submitted an application to the university administration soon after the incident in which they narrated how the incident took place and requested the administration to take action against the culprits.

The girls who were thrashed, the sources said, also received threats that compelled them to go on leave for more than a week from the university. Now, they had resumed their classes but were too scared to record their statement as desired by the inquiry committee, they said.

“There has been no progress on the issue after we had submitted an account of the incident on the committee’s directives weeks ago,” said Arsalan Arian, vice president of Karachi University’s Punjabi Students Association (PSA), the student group whose members received serious injuries by another group belonging to the Islami Jamiat-i-Talaba (IJT).

The inquiry committee’s insistence on recording girls’ statements, he said, seemed a bit irrational given the fact that the student adviser took their statements soon after the incident.

Replying to a question whether the PSA had identified students involved in the violence, he said the university administration was well aware of their identities. “University officials, including the campus security adviser and the student adviser, were all there on the spot.

“The Rangers also took four students involved in the incident into their custody but released them after intervention from the administration. We don’t want that students are expelled, but there should be some punishment for them so such incidents do not occur in future,” he said, pointing out that his association also refrained itself from filing an FIR in the hope that the university would take some action.

The committee investigating the violence is headed by chairperson of the psychology department Dr Anila Amber Malik. Other members are: student adviser Prof Syed Ansar Rizvi, campus security adviser Dr Mohammad Zubair, Dr Shahid Naseem of the geology department and senior medical officer Dr Nadeem Shaikh-uz-Zaman. None of them was available for official comments on the slow pace of the investigation.

Meanwhile, the other inquiry committee set up to investigate thrashing of journalists during a protest held to condemn beating of girl students submitted its report to the vice chancellor on Tuesday.

“The report doesn’t fix responsibility for the violence as none of the victim journalists came to record their accounts, despite repeated requests,” said a committee member on condition of anonymity.

There were general recommendations in the report on how to avoid such incidents in future, he added.

Upon contact, KU registrar Moazzam Ali Khan declined to comment on the slow progress of the committee on the cricket match violence and said that no time frame was given for submission of the report and it’s entirely up to the inquiry officer how she conducted the investigation.

“The university administration can’t interfere in her job. As for the other committee’s report, it’s with the vice chancellor and I have no clue to its findings,” he said.

It may be recalled that IJT representatives at the KU had denied that their students were involved in thrashing girl students for playing cricket match with boys, though they admitted that a clash between the two groups did take place.

Published in Dawn, December 3rd, 2015