Shabana Azmi calls police action on FTII students unfortunate, condemns lathi charge

A fragile peace that was achieved in October after the agitating students of the Pune-based Film and Television Institute of Indian (FTII) called off their 140-day strike was shattered on Thursday soon after Gajendra Chauhan took charge of the institution. The students protested with such fury that the police resorted to baton charge and detained around 40 of them.

Noted actor Shabana Azmi did not approve of this baton charge on the protesting students and she thought the police intervention unnecessary.

“It’s a very unfortunate state of affair when students are subjected to lathi charge. If you feel very strongly about something you should be able to have a platform. And at no point police needed to do that. It’s very unfortunate I condemn the attack on the students,” Shabana said CNN-IBN.

The protest had started off in June last year after the TV actor and BJP member Gajendra Chauhan was appointed as the chairman of FTII.