‘Clarify if rape took place’: HC seeks Punjab response in Lovely Professional University unrest case

The Punjab and Haryana High Court on Wednesday directed the Punjab Police to clarify whether a student was raped at Lovely Professional University before violence broke out on the campus, Bar and Bench reported.

A bench sought a status report from the Punjab government in a petition filed by a university student, who has sought a Central Bureau of Investigation probe into the violence.

The court asked the Punjab government to specify “whether any incident…occurred as was reported on Reddit” on September 26.

It also asked the police to report what steps they had taken to verify the allegation. If no such incident took place, the court directed the police to inform it of the steps taken to have the social media post removed.

The allegation of rape on campus has not been confirmed. The alleged incident came to light after an unverified Reddit post claimed that a worker had raped a student on campus after which the university sent her home and she later died by suicide, Live Law reported.

The petition stated that the post and subsequent WhatsApp messages led to around 2,000 students gathering outside a girls hostel, after which some of them blocked National Highway 44 between Phagwara and Jalandhar.

The petitioner has claimed that the violence was not a spontaneous protest but a planned...

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