QAU closed after clashes between student groups.

ISLAMABAD: On Monday, two student groups engaged in a violent fight on the Quaid-i-Azam University (QAU) campus, using batons and sticks to inflict injuries on one another.

Although the violence began with a brief altercation between two student groups, the university administration was unable to maintain control of the situation.

The campus soon became a battlefield as both sides battered one another with sticks, stones, and other dangerous objects as tempers quickly boiled. The fight caused a dreadful scenario on campus for hours, but the university administration did not contact the police to manage it; instead, they only mobilised the internal security staff, who were unable to contain the situation.

Although the cause of the altercation was not immediately clear, Baloch and Pakhtun students turned on one another and began fighting with fists, clubs, and rods.

The university’s management declared in a notice that the school will be closed indefinitely. The university administration has ordered the students to leave the dorms, both the boys’ and girls’ dorms, immediately, according to the notification.

“The QAU is closed until further orders in light of a hazardous law-and-order situation and violent skirmishes between the student factions. The statement stated, “All hostel inhabitants, whether male and female, are now ordered to leave the hostels immediately.

Such violence had already taken place at a prestigious university. Violence and armed confrontations have also occurred on campus in the past.

When asked about the incident and the administration’s failure to control the situation, QAU Interim Vice-Chancellor Dr. Shaista Sohail declined to respond.

An administration official, however, asserted that the aggressive groups were headed by expelled university students who had been charged in numerous FIRs for disrupting law and order and using violence.

The official claimed that because of rulings made against them by the university’s disciplinary committee, they are now trying to incite students to strike against the administration in order to cause unrest on campus.

According to sources, the university administration hasn’t implemented strong measures to prevent similar occurrences from happening again on campus.

If attention is not paid to the activities of miscreants who prowl around campus and reside in dormitories, the situation has become quite alarming, a senior faculty member who wished to remain anonymous said. He claimed that the prestige of the esteemed academic institution was being harmed by the ongoing violence.

He claimed that after viewing the terrible campus environment, parents who bring their kids to enrol them in various programmes leave and never come back.

In the past, he claimed, it was never observed that students caused damage to university property, but astonishingly, this practise was now becoming more common during such conflicts.

He stated that some of the main causes of such more serious instances included a lack of adequate security measures, the absence of a boundary wall, and visitors inside the campus.

When the administration refused to address the students who asked for a strike a few months ago, the QAU was shut down for weeks.

Authorities claimed that tensions between the two groups had been building at the campus for the previous few days.

In the major public universities in the city, like QAU, Federal Urdu University, and the International Islamic University, clashes between dozens of active ethnic and sectarian student groups are frequent.