Ahmedabad:

Six students from Afghanistan and one from East Africa have been asked to vacate the Gujarat University’s hostel rooms for overstaying, an official said on Sunday, in a move coming weeks after some foreign students were attacked for offering namaz on the premises.

An Afghan and a Gambian delegation had visited the university days after the March 16 attack and held a meeting with the vice-chancellor over safety measures.

Talking to PTI, the university’s vice-chancellor Neerja Gupta said, “Six students from Afghanistan and one from East Africa were asked to vacate their hostel rooms after they were found overstaying.” These persons had completed their studies and were staying in the hostel as ex-students due to some pending administrative work, she said.

The university has ensured that they are no longer required to stay in the hostel and arranged for them to return to their respective countries, Gupta said.

“We have completed the required paperwork and they can now safely return to their native countries. We don’t want to keep any former students in our hostel. We have informed the consulates of the respective countries, and they have also directed these students to vacate the hostel,” the vice-chancellor said.

More than 300 international students are enrolled in Gujarat University, she said.

Around two dozen people barged into the government-run university’s hostel on the night of March 16 and assaulted students from foreign countries for offering namaz at one of the blocks during the ongoing month of Ramzan, police said.

Two students from Sri Lanka and Tajikistan were hospitalised following the incident.

“Don’t make us an investigation agency”, the High Court said firmly on Monday while rejecting a request from a lawyer to take up as a suo moto PIL the attack on foreign students at state-run Gujarat University over the weekend.

The High Court division bench headed by Chief Justice Sunita Agrawal along with Justice Aniruddha P Mayee underlined that they are not police inspectors, emphasising their role as a constitutional court.

The bench declined to take suo motu cognisance of the incident, highlighting that the police would handle the matter.

The court’s stance was clear that not every incident in the city warrants a PIL.

“Our effort is that justice be done, but don’t make us an investigating agency. We are not doing that. We still want to remind ourselves that we are constitutional courts.

“We will definitely take into cognisance if such a matter comes in, but this is not one of those,” the Chief Justice said.

The decision came after lawyer K R Koshti urged the HC to consider the issue as a suo motu PIL.

The Chief Justice emphasised, “Don’t substitute this court with police inspectors…We are not investigating officers.” The court advised the lawyer to seek legal recourse if there were concerns about the FIR filed by the police.

Around two dozen people allegedly barged into the government-run Gujarat University’s hostel in Ahmedabad on Saturday night and raised an objection to students from foreign countries offering namaz near the facility block where they stayed, according to the police.

Two students – one from Sri Lanka and another from Tajikistan – were hospitalised after the incident which took place in the A-block hostel, police earlier said.

An FIR was registered against 20-25 unidentified assailants, and nine teams were formed to conduct a probe into the incident, they said.

So far, five persons have been arrested in connection with the incident, the police said. 

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