Jahangirnagar University (JU) has strongly denied claims made by Islamist preacher and Jamaat-e-Islami candidate for Kushtia-3 (Sadar) constituency, Mufti Amir Hamza.
In a statement issued Sunday afternoon, Mohammad Mohiuddin, acting director of JU’s Public Relations Office, said the administration had taken note of comments Hamza made on social media about the university.
Hamza had claimed he once enrolled in the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at JU and alleged that students in residential halls gargled with alcohol in the mornings and that students had beaten teachers with sticks.
The university administration said none of these statements were true. The Department of Journalism and Media Studies was only established in 2011, admitting its first cohort of undergraduates in the 2011–12 academic year. “Hamza’s claim of having been a student of the department is false,” the statement said.
The allegation of students gargling with alcohol was also described as “fabricated and baseless,” with the university noting there was no evidence of such practices. The claim that students assaulted teachers with sticks was dismissed as “sheer nonsense,” emphasizing that teacher-student relations at JU had always been exemplary.
“Spreading unfounded and malicious statements about a national institution like Jahangirnagar University is unacceptable, unexpected and regrettable,” the statement read. The university administration urged Hamza to refrain from making such baseless remarks and to be objective in his public statements.
