JNU violence case

Cops may soon make a breakthrough in the JNU violence

NEW DELHI: Delhi Police may soon make a breakthrough in theas the Crime Branch is learnt to have received information about three suspects, including a woman, who had covered their faces and were seen wielding sticks on students.While police remained tight-lipped, a source said that the three students' location at the time of the violence was being corroborated from the list of all mobile numbers active in the area and their call details record (CDR) analysis.The crime branch is also probing the role of a few "insiders" who were "accompanying and guiding" the suspects. This was revealed during interviews with students and hostel staff, who said the assailants did not knock on all doors and seemed to have precise information about their targets.We have multiple statements from people who said that it seemed as if the suspects had precise information about their targets," said a cop.The analysis of appearance and get-up of the masked suspects also indicates that all of them were probably aged below 30 and were college students. The police are trying to get CCTV footages, pictures and mobile videos from around the university to locate people wearing similar clothes, but without their faces covered.Police are also in the process of sending some of the videos to the forensic labs to establish their authenticity and rule out tampering. On Tuesday, police had appealed to the public at large to share any mobile phone video or picture of the violence.TOI also spoke to security guards at JNU who confessed that they were outnumbered and had to retreat on several occasions during Sunday evening's violence. Some of them, who have recorded statements with the police, said that the mob of 100-150 people had vandalised Periyar and Sabarmati hostels. A peace-committee consisting of cops, JNU authorities and students has been formed to restore normalcy at the campus. The first meeting of the committee was held on Wednesday.Cops said they would take the guards to the spots which saw violence to reconstruct sequence of events and establish the locations from where which the attacks had come. Cops are also trying to identify some of the vehicles that had entered the premises immediately before the clashes broke out.The log-books of the security guards at all the gates have been recovered to verify these details.Police are trying to recreate the sequence of the clashes on campus that took place in four phases - the last two being the most violent - through Sunday. The first clash took place near the school of social sciences and the second near the admin block at noon.The security guards who had tried to stop the students from attacking each other have also been asked to appear before the probe team and record their statement as witnesses to the incident.The guards say that lights around the Periyar hostel and the Sabarmati T-point, where the attack took place, were switched off from the control panels and seemed to have been operated by someone familiar with the controls.The Crime Branch team went to Periyar and Sabarmati hostels and spoke to nearly 150 students, wardens and hostel staff. True-frame pictures of all the mobile phone footage have been developed and shown to the students to identify some of the masked youths.Police have also analysed and zeroed in on the locations of more than 800 mobile phones that were found active around the university campus. They have recovered the PCR call records of the day and would record the statements of the callers and treat these as eyewitness accounts.