By Manira Chaudhary:
On January 7, Gajendra Chauhan took charge at FTII, over 7 months after his appointment as Chairman. The campus saw a heavy deployment of security personnel since morning. Chauhan’s appointment has been mired in controversy with students stating that he does not have the “stature and the vision” required to head India’s premiere film and TV institution. However, despite a 139-day strike, the decision to put Chauhan at the helm wasn’t taken back. On the day of his appointment, as Chauhan began his meeting with other members of the FTII society, matters turned ugly.
The following video shows the occurrences of the day, when many protesting students were heckled and lathi-charged by the police. It was compiled by Nooryaab Nakhat (a 2014 batch student of Screenplay Writing at FTII) and Maisam (a 2012 Batch student of Direction at FTII) While numbers vary across different reports, another student, Rahat Jain confirmed to Youth Ki Awaaz that in all, 40 students were detained for over 6 hours at the Shivaji Nagar Police ground. “Many students were manhandled, beaten and shoved into the police vans. There was more police force than we expected,” Jain added.
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