Tense situation prevailed in front of Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprise (NICE) office on peripheral ring road on Thursday evening. Some students and faculty members of Environment Support Group (ESG), led by its coordinator Leo Saldanha staged a snap protest alleging that NICE workers tried to assault faculty members and students when they were on a study trip.

Police rushed to the spot and pacified the group. The incident did not affect the traffic flow in anyway and complaint and counter complaint were registered following the incident, Talaghattapura police said.
ESG chief Leo Saldanha said that eight American students and a faculty member and two faculty members and two students, who were travelling in a tempo traveller and a car respectively, got down near the NICE office. The faculty members were explaining to the students, who were studying townships under a project entitled ‘Cities in 21st Century.’ The NICE workers objected.

They misbehaved with a woman faculty and girl students besides using abusive language. There was no proper response from the police and Talaghattapura police, who came to the spot late, also behaved rudely, he claimed.
NICE PRO Manjunath refuted the allegations. “It’s a private road. They did not take prior permission to study the project. Moreover, they parked the vehicles right in middle of the road hampering vehicular movement. Saldanha is a known opponent of NICE. None of the NICE workers either manhandled or misbehaved with woman faculty and girl students,” he added.

Talaghattapura police station sub inspector Manjunath also refuted the charges of Saldanha. The police rushed to the spot as soon as they were informed about the incident, he said.