LPU Halted Classes for 10 Days Before the Facts Landed

Lovely Professional University froze classes for 10 days from 28 September after violent protests over an unproven hostel-rape claim emptied its Phagwara campus. Police have registered a case against an unidentified person, and more than 2,000 personnel held the gates while students left for home.

The Special Investigation Team still has no named accused. National Highway-44 had already been blocked for more than 15 hours, and the mid-term window listed for early October was wiped before forensic tests were in.

Why LPU Shut Classes for 10 Days

The freeze is the part of the LPU protest that cannot be walked back on a press note. Regular classes are off for 10 days from 28 September, mid-term examinations are postponed until further notice, and students were told they could travel home after speaking to parents or guardians. Those who stayed were asked to remain inside hostels and keep out of further unrest.

THE BILL BEFORE ANY VERDICT

• Class freeze: Regular teaching is off for 10 days from 28 September, with mid-terms postponed until a new timetable is posted on the University Management System.
• Highway: Protesters blocked NH-44, the Delhi-Amritsar road outside the campus, for more than 15 hours before traffic moved again.
• Force: ADGP M.F. Farooqui said more than 2,000 personnel were deployed, and police later ran a flag march on campus.
• Network cut: DIG Naveen Singla said mobile internet was shut in a 3 to 4 km ring around the university until 10 pm on 28 September.

Jalandhar Range DIG Naveen Singla said the first gathering formed near Girls’ Hostel-3 around 1 am on Sunday, 27 September. Students then moved toward the main gate, damaged window panes and shops, and by about 4 am were on the highway. Some climbed a decommissioned MiG-23UM on display and a military tank at the gate. Clips from the campus Uni Mall showed people lifting food and gadgets while a voice off-camera talked about shopping for free. Those clips have not been independently verified, and it is not clear everyone in them was a student.

SP (Investigation) Harinder Gill said Monday that the campus had been peaceful since the previous night and that students had been leaving after the 10-day notice. The rape claim that started the night is still an open police file.

Police Opened a Rape Case With No Named Accused

Students said a woman in Girls’ Hostel-3 had been raped by a plumber, or another outsider working on campus, three days before they came out, and that the warden was told and did nothing. They said she had been sent home. Police registered an FIR against an unknown person on the students’ complaint, using Section 64 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, the rape-punishment clause. No accused has been named.

Senior officers said a first check at the hostel room the protesters pointed to did not back the allegation. “The three girls present in the hostel room where the sexual assault is alleged to have occurred denied that any such incident took place,” one officer said. DIG Singla said forensic samples, CCTV and call records would be examined “before reaching a conclusion.”

WHAT WE KNOW

• The case: An FIR names no person and rests on the students’ complaint, not on a completed finding that a rape occurred.
• The room: Three women who said they live in Room 504 of Girls’ Hostel-3 appeared in a university video and said no rape had taken place there in the two months they had stayed.
• The SIT: The team is headed by SP (Phagwara) Major Singh and includes a DSP, a woman police inspector and student representatives.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The assault: Police have not established that the alleged rape happened, and the identity circulating on student chats has not been independently verified.
• The link to a death: There is no established finding tying the hostel claim to the 10 September death of another student.
• Who threw stones: DGP Gaurav Yadav said outsiders may have been on campus; that point is still being checked against CCTV.

Registrar Monica Gulati called the circulating reports “false, baseless and fabricated” and blamed “anti-social elements.” An LPU spokesperson called the episode a “deliberate” and “concerted” attempt to harm the university’s name. Vice-Chancellor Jaspal Singh Sandhu said the university would hand over whatever police asked for.

The police have registered an FIR and the university is fully cooperating with the investigation. So far, no such incident has come to my notice. We will provide all CCTV footage, anything the police want.

Jaspal Singh Sandhu, Vice-Chancellor, Lovely Professional University

Sandhu also said, in a separate remark, that there was nothing to hide. The SIT’s job is to test that claim against tape, phones and forensics, not against a Sunday night crowd.

Room 504 and the Women-Only Staff Demand

The university’s video of the three Room 504 residents was meant to kill the hostel story in a single clip. The women said they felt harassed by repeated police questions. That did not stop the protest, because the crowd had already attached a longer list to the rape claim.

Talks with the administration did not end the blockade even after an FIR was promised. Students had said they would stand down once a case was on paper, then stayed on the road. They wanted Founder-Chancellor Ashok Mittal, a Rajya Sabha MP, at the site. They wanted an apology from the pro-vice-chancellor, action if negligence was proved, and a promise that the University Management System would not be used against them.

WHAT STUDENTS PUT ON THE TABLE

• Hostel staffing: Only women should work inside girls’ hostels, a demand DGP Yadav said police had already tried to close in meetings.
• The warden: Some protesters asked that the hostel warden be removed.
• Security: Stronger checks at girls’ hostels and a ban on male staff in those blocks.
• Protection: No punishment through the University Management System, and no rustication for joining the protest.
• The founder: Mittal himself, not only the vice-chancellor, should come to the gate and give an assurance.

DGP Yadav said girl students had asked that “the entire hostel staff should comprise women,” and that officers had “bridged the gap” in talks, with another meeting set for the next day. The rape file and the staffing file are not the same thing, and police have treated them as separate. Students also asked that they not be hit later by a code that can treat campus protests as disciplinary misconduct, including walkouts, campaigns and the spreading of claims the university calls rumour.

One student put the safety problem in a harder line than the administration’s video. “This protest is going on for the girls, but the girls themselves don’t feel safe inside,” the student said. Another said the university had asked people to stay in hostels and protest peacefully, then added they felt safe for the moment but were unsure the campus would be normal after 10 days.

Walkie-Talkies, a Datar and Five Detentions

By Sunday evening the hostel argument was no longer the only police problem. Officers said they had tried to talk students off the highway, then faced stone pelting. A lathi charge followed. Students ran back toward campus and hit police vehicles. Jalandhar Rural SSP Harvinder Singh Virk said two police vehicles were set on fire and four to five others were damaged. Several personnel were injured. Force then came in from Kapurthala, Jalandhar Rural and Hoshiarpur.

DGP Yadav, sent to the campus by Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, said the trouble began on the night of 26 and 27 September after “late-night rumours about certain incidents.” He said a gate section was burned and that walkie-talkies pointed to people who did not belong on campus.

Walkie-talkies have been found here. We have also found the role of outsiders because walkie-talkies have been found. Secondly, there is viral CCTV footage of the inside premises which shows that there were men who came close to the women’s hostel, which is being questioned, because of which the violence probably occurred.

Gaurav Yadav, Director General of Police, Punjab

Kapurthala SSP Gaurav Toora said police detained four to five people late Saturday night after one was found with a walkie-talkie, and that questioning showed they were army personnel sent by an officer whose daughter lived in a hostel. 27th Battalion Commandant Gurmeet Kaur gave a matching count from the ground: five youths apprehended, with a sickle-like datar and a walkie-talkie recovered, and interrogation still on. Yadav said anyone seen on CCTV taking part in vandalism would face cases, “no matter how big a person they are.”

Student Vishal Kumar described a shift after dark that matches that outsider file. “Until yesterday morning, the situation was normal; students were protesting. But as night fell, a large number of people came from outside wearing masks and it turned violent,” he said. “The scenes last night were horrific. We are now going home; that is a safe option.”

A student named Karan said the worst stretch ran from about 10 pm to midnight, before police arrived after midnight. He also claimed people with knives entered a girls’ hostel. That knife claim has not been independently established. What the night did establish is simpler. Once a crowd, a highway blockade and a mall loot were in motion, the original hostel-safety demand was competing with arson, theft and a live question about who had walked in.

A Second Punjab Campus, 140 km South

LPU did not come out of a quiet week. Chitkara University, about 140 km away near Rajpura, had already seen a hostel scare on the night of 25 September. Students there gathered over claims of screams, missing women and suicides. Patiala police said no student was missing. A medical officer at Rajpura Civil Hospital said no recent post-mortem involved Chitkara students. Banur SHO Gursewak Singh said the scare began on 23 September when some girls allegedly played frightening sounds through a speaker in a hostel.

Special DGP Sinha said there did not, so far, appear to be a link between the two campuses. Other officers said they were still checking whether the back-to-back nights meant anything. Chitkara halted classes through 1 October, with teaching due to resume on 5 October, and no rape FIR was filed there.

TWO CAMPUSES, TWO NIGHTS

On X, the LPU night was flattened into a single horror story within hours. Posts treated the alleged rape and a suicide as one chain, named an electrician or a plumber as fact, and in some cuts claimed Air Force men had stormed a hostel or that students had been shot. That is not in the police file. Kapurthala police, in early remarks carried on student channels, had already said the viral hostel-death version was false. The louder effect was still the same: a 600-acre campus was being run, for a night, by forwarded messages.

Laxmi Chandra and the Seventh-Floor Fall

Protesters also pulled a separate death into the same argument. Laxmi Chandra, 21, a BTech Agriculture student from Telangana, died on 10 September after jumping from the seventh floor of a girls’ hostel around 11 am. She was declared dead after a medical check, and her body went to Civil Hospital, Phagwara, for post-mortem. Police said they were still investigating the circumstances. DIG Singla said her parents had visited and that her phone had been sent for forensic tests.

“If the students say that there was foul play, action will be taken,” Singla said. That is not a finding that foul play occurred, and it is not a finding that her death is connected to the Hostel-3 complaint. It is a live file that a crowd decided belonged in the same shout.

THE DATES STUDENTS TIED TOGETHER

1. 10 September 2026: Laxmi Chandra dies after a fall from the seventh floor of a girls’ hostel; police open an investigation and later send her phone for forensic tests.
2. 25 September 2026: Chitkara students protest through the night over unverified hostel claims; police later say no one is missing.
3. 27 September 2026: LPU students gather around 1 am near Girls’ Hostel-3, block NH-44 about 4 am, and clash with police by evening.
4. 28 September 2026: LPU suspends classes for 10 days, postpones mid-terms, and students leave under a heavy police watch.

Fusing those dates on a phone screen is easy. Proving a single plot is the SIT’s work, and it has not done that.

Parents Packed the Stations After the Highway Cleared

NH-44 was restored after more than 15 hours. Jalandhar Police Commissioner Satinder Singh said reports of trouble inside hostels were rumours and that every hostel had been checked. Families still treated the 10-day notice as an evacuation order. Parents arrived to collect children, and stations in Jalandhar and Phagwara filled. Vishal Kumar’s line about going home being the safe option was the working theory on those platforms.

The academic cost sits on a published calendar, not only on a crisis memo. For most full-time programmes, LPU had listed mid-term tests from 1 to 9 October. The 10-day freeze from 28 September runs through 7 October, which takes a bite out of that window even before the separate postponement order. Agriculture programmes, Laxmi Chandra’s stream among them, sit on a different calendar, so the hit is not uniform. For thousands of other students it is a term with no teaching and no mid-term date.

DGP Yadav said police had used “minimum force” because the protesters were “basically just kids,” then promised cases against whoever the cameras catch breaking shops and burning vehicles. ADGP Farooqui told families that daughters in hostels were safe and that the campus was calm. Both can be true on a Monday morning and still leave the week that follows empty. The SIT will either name an accused or it will not. The 10-day shutdown, the packed trains and the dark shops in the Uni Mall are already on the books.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of a police investigation and campus unrest, and it is for information only. It is not a finding that a sexual assault occurred, and it is not legal advice about criminal complaints, university discipline or student safety. Anyone directly affected should speak to Punjab Police, a qualified criminal lawyer, or the university’s own grievance channels before acting on any claim in circulation. Figures, deployments and case statuses reflect official and on-record statements as published on 28 September 2026 and may change as the SIT records evidence.