Gujarat high court refuses to take cognizance of attacks on foreign students

The court’s remarks came after lawyers requested the court to take up the issue in the form of a “suo motu PIL”.

Ahmedabad:

The Gujarat High Court on Monday said it should not be an investigative agency and each incident was not a matter of PIL, referring to the attack on foreign students at a college hostel in Ahmedabad.

A division bench of Chief Justice Sunita Agarwal and Justice Aniruddha P Mayee refused to take cognizance of the incident (separately) and said the police would investigate the matter.

The court’s remarks came after lawyers requested the court to treat the issue as a public interest litigation.

“Our effort is to deliver justice, but don’t make us an investigative agency. We are not going to do that. We still want to remind ourselves that we are the Constitutional Court. If something like this comes up, we will certainly take it seriously, but this is not one of them. One,” Chief Justice Agrawal said.

She said every incident in the city had nothing to do with PIL.

“Don’t replace this court with police inspectors. Don’t make us police inspectors. We are not investigating police,” CJ Agrawal said.

When lawyer KR Koshti submitted that the police had not included all relevant sections in the FIR, the court asked him to take legal remedies.

According to police, around two dozen people broke into the government-run Gujarat University hostel in Ahmedabad on Saturday night to object to foreign students holding worship near the facility where they were staying.

Police earlier said two students, one from Sri Lanka and the other from Tajikistan, were admitted to hospital following the incident in Block A hostel.

They said an FIR has been registered against 20 to 25 unidentified attackers and nine teams have been formed to investigate the incident.

Five people have been arrested so far in connection with the incident, police said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)