NHRC seeks report on Prof Sabharwal's death within 15 days

New Delhi, Sep 6 (UNI) The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) today asked the Madhya Pradesh Government to look into the death of Ujjain professor H S Sabharwal who was allegedly assaulted by students and sought a report within 15 days on the incident.

The Commission, which took suo-moto cognisance of media reports on the August 26 incident, directed the state Chief Secretary and Director General of Police to submit the report.

It also asked that a copy of the media report be sent to the two officials.

After going through the contents of the reports, NHRC said, ''if they are true they raise serious issue of violation of human rights of the citizens''.

Prof Sabharwal's son, Himanshu, had also petitioned NHRC on September 4 and sought a CBI probe into his father's death.

He had said the family had lost faith in the local administration and claimed police was tampering with the evidence and protecting the guilty.

Himanshu alleged that the state government and police were not providing the family papers like postmortem report and medico- legal certificate (MLC) due to which they could not move the Supreme Court.

The Commission took note of several news reports which said the incident occurred at Madhav College in Ujjain, when the elections for college president took a violent turn.

When the college administration decided to stop polling without providing the reason, ABVP members got angry and claimed that they would have won the elections if the polling had not been stopped, the reports said.

''Soon a scuffle started between ABVP and NSUI students and police resorted to lathicharge,'' they said.

Later when Prof L N Nath and Mr Mittal alongwith Prof Sabharwal were walking out of the college a group of students beat them up, blackened their faces and accused them of being biased against the ABVP. Four to five policemen, who were on duty there, did nothing to save the teachers, the reports added.

The reports also said Prof Sabharwal, who had undergone a by-pass surgery, collapsed and later died in the hospital where he was taken along with his two colleagues.

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