JNU Violence: VC says attackers targeted CCTV room so footage would be inaccessible

JNU Vice-Chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar said a data centre on campus has been deliberately targeted by students to ensure there would be no CCTV footage as evidence of the violence unleashed on Sunday night.

Speaking about the alleged incident, the VC said, "About 10 or 12 students whose faces were completely covered with clothes abused technical staff and shut down the data centre a couple of days before Sunday's violence. The data centre is the "nerve centre" of JNU. All our CCTV data is connected to our data centre. If those students...are working for the right cause, why should they cover their faces?... They could have simply protested, right?" asked the VC.

Kumar alleged the attackers may have deliberately damaged the data centre so that CCTV footage of future events couldn't be captured.

"And that is what happened on the 5th. Our data centre was down, and many of our CCTV [cameras]...they were unable to capture the data. So there seems to be some link between what happened on the 5th and what happened on the 3rd," he said.

Masked goons came inside the JNU campus on the night of January 5 and beat up students with iron rods on their heads. Even professors were beaten up by the masked gang.