I am in big trouble, Afaq Ahmad,an M.Phil student of Mass Communication at the AMU,had said when The Indian Express had spoken to him on April 14 at the universitys Health Centre. The trouble only seems to have got bigger for him. Afaq Ahmad was one of the few people who came on record for the April 18 story You Are Being Watched,published in The Sunday Express. He had even allowed himself to be photographed. Afaq had been transferred to the Non-Resident Students Centre of the AMU on April 12. Simply put,he had been thrown out of the VM Residential Hall of the University. On April 22,Afaqs troubles multiplied manifold. He was suspended from the university itself. Afaq had been thrown out of the VM Hall after he was caught filming the dining hall without permission. The food was bad and the students were being charged Rs 200 extra. So after a general body meeting on March 2,the students decided to supervise the running of the dining hall for a month,and the university agreed, Afaq had said. A month later,Afaq,along with two of his friends,started filming the hall,ostensibly to prove to the university authorities that the food had improved and the students were happy. His suspension from the university,however,came for a much more serious charge. He has been accused of threatening Vice-Chancellor P K Abdul Azis in a letter received by the V-C on April 21. The office memo suspending Afaq,dated April 22 from the Proctors office,quotes the letter supposedly sent in Aziss name: We the residents of VM Hall strongly oppose the CCTV cameras on the campus; especially in the VM Hall. We are innocent students,not criminals or terrorists (sic.). You have wasted Rs 10 crore on the installation of these cameras. Enough is enough. We warn you to remove this camera from our hall,otherwise we will destroy it within a week. The Proctors letter claimed that the signatures on the petition attached to the threat letter had been forged by Afaq. However,the university is unable to produce the original signatures. We had sent a number of petitions related to the running of the dining hall to the Provost. I suspect the administration has used the list of signatures used in one of them against me, said Afaq on Friday. The V-C received a copy of the signatures. He asked my office to verify their authenticity,and we found Afaqs signature to be correct, said AMU Proctor Zubair Khan. He admitted that his office had suspended Afaq before verifying the authenticity of the other signatures or giving the accused a chance to represent himself. This is a normal procedure. We suspend first and then issue a showcause notice, replied the Proctor when asked whether the university had weighed the possibility that Afaq could be innocent and might end up losing his attendance because of a false allegation. Even as the university administration claims Afaq shot off a warning letter to the V-C in his name,he remains at the University Health Centre,recuperating from chicken pox. The Proctor himself seems to have inadvertently added a twist to this tale. The office memo suspending Afaq has been sent to 10 types of offices. The 10th entry merely says,L.I.U. Unit,Proctor Office. Proctor Zubair Khan claimed that the L.I.U. (Local Intelligence Unit) did not exist. The team that is mistaken for an intelligence unit is merely the watch and ward in civilian dress, he claimed. However,when confronted with the mention in the letter he had signed,Khan refused to comment further. It is also surprising that the Proctor decided to refer a memo originating from his office to a unit that works out of his own office. Afaq will not be surprised though. We had hardly begun filming when the officials came in (to the dining hall). How did they know so soon? he had asked in his interview on April 14. LIU,a friend had prompted from across the room then.
