Lucknow: At 25, Banaras Hindu University student Akanksha Sharma — better known as Akanksha Azad — has fought many battles. And her latest face-off is with the National Investigation Agency (NIA).
She can be spotted making the rounds of the NIA office in Lucknow after her residence in Varanasi was raided earlier this month as part of the agency’s “crackdown on cadres/over-ground workers of the (banned) Communist Party of India (Maoist)”.
Akanksha, who is from Jharkhand’s Giridih district, is president of the Bhagat Singh Students’ Morcha (BSM, earlier called Bhagat Singh Chhatra Morcha), a political outfit that calls itself the voice of “revolutionaries and the youth” and is mainly active at BHU and in parts of eastern Uttar Pradesh (UP).
“We are hardcore followers of Bhagat Singh. We want a society that has no disparity on the basis of caste or class or gender, not a society where someone is too rich while someone is sleeping on the roads, where women are raped because they are women, someone’s house is being looted because she is an adivasi (tribal) and someone is (urinated) upon because he is a Dalit,” Akanksha told ThePrint outside the NIA office in Lucknow Wednesday.
In Varanasi, Akanksha has led a string of protests over issues including the alleged molestation of a blind student by the son of a BHU professor, short library hours, reservation for OBC students in hostels, and the security of female students.
Following the raids on her residence in Varanasi’s Mahamanapuri locality, Akanksha was issued a notice to join the NIA investigation in a case lodged against several activists from across UP in connection with “revival of the northern region bureau (NRB) of banned outfit CPI (Maoist)”.
The agency has since questioned her in connection with the case. Speaking to ThePrint, Akanksha termed the action against her and the others “politically motivated”, and said that it was her activism, along with her Jharkhand connection, that had led to the notice being issued against her.
“I am not guilty and these allegations, not just against me but all activists including those involved in the Bhima Koregaon case, are politically motivated. Muslims are being termed terrorists and intellectuals are being termed Maoists deliberately, so that whatever support base we have will be finished,” she said.
The BHU unit of the the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), however claims that Akanksha and the BSM are associated with those who follow a “Naxal ideology”.
“That the NIA raided their premises is itself a big thing,” said Abhay Pratap Singh, ABVP’s BHU unit president, to ThePrint. “I have been studying in BHU for the past seven years and I have viewed their activities on campus, work style, literature and their social media posts. They are associated with Ritesh Vidyarthi, Seema Azad and Soni Azad who have been accused of following Naxal ideology. Students should raise students’ issues but they don’t do that, they follow radical Left-Maoist ideology.”
Accusing the BSM of “spreading Naxal ideology in BHU with the support of some persons working on the campus”, ABVP’s BHU unit had on 5 September demanded that the group be banned.
ThePrint reached the NIA’s public relations officer via telephone calls and messages about Akanksha’s allegations. This article will be updated when a response is received.
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‘Tendency to fight for others’
Akanksha arrived in Varanasi in 2016 to pursue higher studies at BHU campus. Within two years, she had joined the BSM.
“She has a tendency to pick up fights for the sake of others. As a child, if I scolded a cobbler in front of her, she would scold me instead. She would never hurt anyone,” said her father, Aditya Pal Sharma, a retired extension officer from Giridih.
After a bachelor’s degree and a master’s in political science, she is currently doing an MPhil in subaltern studies. She became joint secretary of the BSM in 2018 and its president in 2021.
“There are a lot of outfits at BHU but it was the BSM’s commitment to its ideology that inspired me to become part of it. We follow Bhagat Singh in a hardcore way and want to create a society that is prosperous and has no disparity,” Akanksha said.
Akanksha’s activism
In 2019, Akanksha was part of a protest led by women students of BHU against a zoology department professor who had been reinstated after suspension for alleged sexual misconduct.
The same year, she was among the students who sat on a hunger strike outside the BHU vice-chancellor’s residence demanding that the library and canteen stay open around the clock. They also demanded the implementation of the guidelines of the gender sensitisation committee against sexual harassment at the BHU campus, as well as toilets and sanitary pad vending machines for women in every department.
“It was only after the strike that the V-C agreed to open the library’s reading room 24×7 and acceded to some more demands. Earlier, the library would open only till 5 pm,” said Shashikant Kumar, another BHU student who was also part of the hunger strike.
When Delhi witnessed protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act in late 2019, BHU students including Akanksha sided with students from Jamia Millia Islamia and Aligarh Muslim University, and led protests on campus.
Akanksha was also among a group of BHU students who in November 2019 led a march from the Vishwanath Temple on campus to the university’s Lanka gate against an alleged lathi-charge on students of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). The protest led to the BHU administration issuing notices to the students, who had held up a banner saying ‘Narendra Modi Shiksha Virodhi’.
Then in January this year, when the son of a BHU professor was accused of molesting a blind student, Akanksha and BSM member Siddhi Bismil spearheaded a protest against him.
She was also involved in protests against the now-repealed farm laws and against the Lakhimpur Kheri violence in 2021. For the latter protest, an FIR was lodged against the agitating students, who included Akanksha, for alleged violation of Covid norms. ThePrint has a copy of the FIR.
Akanksha said she had received a total of three notices from the BHU administration asking her to appear before them, with the last coming in 2021. This also meant that she would have to call her parents to meet the university authorities.
“She did not inform us about the first two notices but the third said that she could face expulsion if we did not present ourselves before the administration,” Aditya Pal said.
“I was told that she had gheraoed the V-C’s residence. Her head of department said that my daughter was unruly. I told him that she has always been disciplined at home, and maybe the girls were pained at not being provided facilities. I said that if she resorted to protests even after concerns were addressed, I should be informed,” he explained.
When contacted by ThePrint, Professor Amarnath Mohanty, HOD (political science) at BHU, said he did not have any information on these notices as Akanksha is no longer a student of his department.
The latest agitation that Akanksha spearheaded was in August this year, following an invite from BHU’s Arts faculty to Rajneesh Shukla, former V-C of Mahatma Gandhi Antarrashtriya Hindi Vishwavidyalaya in Maharashtra’s Wardha, for participation in a seminar.
Shukla had resigned from the V-C’s post last month in the wake of his purported chats with a woman that had gone viral on social media and led to allegations of sexual harassment.
The programme was cancelled after the protest, Akanksha said.
‘Now she is trapped’
Akanksha was issued a notice to appear at the NIA office in Lucknow on 12 September in connection with a June 2023 case lodged under Indian Penal Code sections 120B (conspiracy) and 121A (conspiracy to commit certain serious offences or using criminal force to overawe the central government or any state government). ThePrint has a copy of the notice.
Also invoked was the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 — sections 18 (conspiracy or attempt to commit a terrorist act), 18-B (punishment for recruiting of any person or persons for terrorist act), 20 (member of terrorist camp), 38 (offence relating to membership of a terrorist organisation) and 39 (offence relating to support given to a terrorist organisation).
Speaking about the NIA’s interrogation, Akanksha said that “I was called because I am the president of the BSM and because I belong to Jharkhand”.
“They (NIA officers) were saying that our outfit was in touch with Pramod Mishra and Rohit Vidyarthi. They alleged that some Maoists like Vijay Arya had visited our house, which is not true at all. I told them that it was an unproven allegation,” she said.
According to a 6 September NIA statement, Mishra is alleged to be a core committee member of the CPI (Maoist) and Vidyarthi was arrested by the Bihar Police last month in a case pertaining to revival of the outfit.
Akanksha said she had also faced allegations that she was in possession of Naxalite literature, which included copies of the BSM mouthpiece Mashaal and Dastak, edited by Seema Azad, the UP president of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, who was also raided by the NIA.
According to Akanksha, her father, despite being a heart patient, was made to join the NIA probe and was “questioned and pressured by officers”, and she was not allowed to call her lawyer.
Her father said the family is pained and tense at seeing Akanksha being grilled by officers of national-level investigative agencies, and wants her to return home.
“I sent her (to Varanasi) only for studies. Now, she is stuck here in local politics. It is the election constituency of (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi. It is a sensitive place, now she is trapped,” Aditya Pal said.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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