AMU appoints student injured in Dec 15 violence as assistant professor

The Aligarh Muslim University has decided to appoint research scholar Mohammad Tariq, who suffered severe hand injury during the December 15 violence on the campus, as an ad-hoc assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry on "compassionate grounds".

Tariq belongs to a nearby city of Firozabad from a family of daily wage earners.

According to his friends, who are now looking after him at the Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College's trauma centre, Tariq is the future breadwinner of his family as he has an aged father, unwell mother and six other siblings to look after.

Asked to get a photograph of him clicked, Tariq refused, saying "I don't want my mother, who is a heart patient, to know the extent of my injuries".

Recalling the sequence of events, which took place on that fateful night, Tariq said, "I do not want to say anything beyond the fact that I was not part of the protest but all that I remember is that I was running at the road near the university guesthouse when I fell down and the rest is blank."