Kochi: The nearly 150-year old Maharaja's College is infamous for strident campus politics, but no student of the institution had died in violence on its premises until last Sunday. The campus and adjacent localities had witnessed umpteen political clashes over the decades, but SFI leader Abhimanyu became the first student fatality of strife between rival unions. The police are of the view that his mortal stabbing was the result of a plot.
The autonomous college, which originated as a school in 1845 and developed into a college in 1875, was bloodied for the first time in a political clash in 1973, nearly a century after its opening, but the student was not a victim but a passerby. Thomas Isaac, the present state finance minister and then SFI leader, was the target of a knife attack. He escaped by a whisker, but Lakshadweep-native Muthukoya became the victim, succumbing to injuries.
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It was a case of mistaken identity. A gang of goons hired by a rival student outfit was told that their target was a bespectacled student with long hair. Muthukoya had come to the college to call on students from the island while he was in the mainland city. He looked similar to the target and the goons stabbed him from behind as he was walking near the hostel.
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Simon Britto, a survivor of another major knife attack, spends his time on a wheelchair. He was the state vice-president of SFI and a student of the nearby Law College when he was attacked at the General Hospital. He was allegedly stabbed from behind by the activists of a rival union.
Student clashes were indeed numerous, but they were mostly confined to the campus of the college. Last year, students burned the principal's chair and smeared her with black oil. But of late the style of student clashes has changed. That is the message the Sunday night killing conveys.
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