Indian police arrest 16 university students over organizing beef festival
The police while making the arrests also suspended the festival.
HYDERABAD (Web Desk) – Atleast 16 students of Osmania University in Indian state of Hyderabad were detained by the police for organizing beef festival on Thursday.
The police while making the arrests also suspended the festival.
Tensions prevailed at the campus as police sealed the campus to prevent beef festival planned by some student groups and the pork festival and cow worship by their rivals.
According to Indian media, the beef festival is synonymous to challenging the court orders.
Some leftist and Dalit students organizations, however, had declared that they will go ahead with the beef festival on Human Rights Day to uphold food right as one among the human rights.
The students say the festivals are meant to assert everyone s right to choice at a time the country is in the middle of a debate over perceived "intolerance".
Earlier this week, several students were stopped by the police from taking out a two-km run in support of the beef festival.
Right-wing Hindu groups had threatened to stop the festival at any cost. Some of them had called for a pork festival and also Gau Maata Puja to counter it.
Police also took Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) legislator Raja Singh Raja Singh into preventive custody from his house in Dhoolpet area in the morning as he planned to join Gau Maata puja planned by some right-wing Hindu groups on the campus.
