Thread by @nalinisharma_

This is ABSOLUTE LIES! I’m appalled at how this has been created out of thin air. I was MYSELF standing and reporting on a story that had NOTHING to do with AMU when the students began to heckle and threaten us. We weren’t even speaking to any student in the vicinity!

https://twitter.com/rkarnad/status/1095262582837932032

I was reporting live on air when a person who identifies himself as Azeem Akhtar, Security Officer AMU came forward & asked us to stop. Since I was live on air, I didnt respond to what he was saying. He then got agitated that he was being ignored& began messing with our equipment

I immediately got off air once he touched our equipment &asked him to back off. A no. of students gathered around us by this time and started to heckle us asking us to get out of the campus. My cameraperson was pushed around by students and our equipment was manhandled.

This was just the beginning. Slowly the crowd began to grow and there was not one police official in sight. The college security asked us to move out of the campus and as we waited for our car, the verbal heckling began to get physical with students constantly attacking us.

When we tried to fight back, our camera and other equipment was snatched from us. We were physically pushed, verbally abused and harassed. The camera was broken into pieces before us when we tried to record the hooligan behaviour that the students were indulging in.

After our camera was snatched and broken, these students formed a human chain at the gate of the campus urging the others to “not allow these women” to leave the campus “at any cost”. When we tried to break through the chain, we were pushed back and physically threatened.

My female colleague and I with the help of three of our male colleagues managed to push through the human chain and somehow get out of the campus. Outside the police officials were present, watching the drama unfold at the gate of the AMU campus.

We literally ran to our cars while the crowd (150-200 students) continued to chase us. The police provided no help. Our equipment was completely damaged (and set on fire, we were informed later) and anyone trying to record the incident was attacked and their phones broken.

I want to clarify, there was NO provocation from our side to invite this attack. I didn’t even speak to anybody inside the AMU campus until we were surrounded by this crowd of hooligans who continued saying how they’re not going to let us report because we were from Republic.

I’ve never experienced intimidation like this. Once outside the campus, I requested the local administration to retrieve our camera because it had the complete footage of everything that had happened. They said they had “no authority” inside the campus and couldn’t help us.

This is a first hand account of what happened today. Any other version of the story is simply untrue. We have some footage from phones of local journos but most of it has been destroyed. Multiple locals& police officials have told me this kind of occurance is “very common” in AMU

Some journos are reporting “versions” of students saying that reporters were calling AMU students “terrorists”. Nothing can be further away from the truth! Anyone interested in confirming for themselves can watch Republic’s live report around 1.30pm when the whole incident began.