A three-hour street fight near Thiruvananthapuram's University College escalated into a police lathi charge and tear gas after Youth Congress protesters and hostel students blamed each other for starting it.
Thiruvananthapuram's University College premises turned into a battleground on Wednesday evening, September 30, as workers of the SFI and the Youth Congress and KSU clashed for nearly three to four hours near the campus men's hostel. Police eventually moved in with a lathi charge and tear gas shells around Palayam to clear the area.
The trouble started, according to multiple accounts, during a Youth Congress protest against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar outside the college. What happened next depends on who you ask.
Congress MLA Abin Varkky alleged that beer bottles and stones were hurled at Youth Congress workers from inside the university men's hostel, catching even the police off guard. He said vehicles parked nearby were damaged in the chaos. The SFI tells a different story entirely, alleging that Youth Congress workers threw fireballs into the hostel first, and that the clash broke out only after one landed inside. Reports suggest police officers who then entered the hostel assaulted students there, though this has not been independently verified.
Neither side's version has been confirmed by an independent inquiry so far, and the sequence of who struck first remains genuinely disputed.
The violence didn't stay contained to the hostel gates. It spilled onto the streets, drawing in the DYFI, which staged its own protests through the evening. CPI(M) leaders V Sivankutty and PK Sreemathy and CPI's V Joy led a sit-in outside the hostel once things had calmed down enough to gather.
Senior CPI(M) leader Pinarayi Vijayan arrived at the protest site and spoke to reporters, calling the incident a one-sided attack. He said there had been no provocation from SFI workers and squarely blamed Youth Congress for launching it. He went further, alleging the attack was planned in advance.
"It is certain that the Youth Congress attack was part of a pre-planned decision," he said, pointing to what he described as a pattern of Congress, Youth Congress and KSU workers targeting the university hostel in the past.
Vijayan also claimed Congress workers prevented injured students from reaching hospital, an allegation the Congress side has not addressed in the reporting so far.
ADGP P Vijayan and other senior police officers reached the spot as the situation unfolded, and the lathi charge and tear gas eventually dispersed the crowds near Palayam. No arrests or case registrations have been detailed in reports yet.
What's clear is that this wasn't a one-off scuffle. Both sides are already pointing to history, SFI citing past hostel confrontations, Congress pointing to what it calls an unprovoked attack on its own protest. Whether police investigate the competing claims about who threw what first, and whether any FIRs follow, is the thing to watch over the coming days.
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