Cops slap sedition charges on Kanhaiya
NEW DELHI: The Delhi Police charged former Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union (JNUSU) president Kanhaiya Kumar and nine others, including Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya, with sedition on Monday, three years after they allegedly raised “anti-India” slogans at an event at the university.
The police submitted a 1,200page charge sheet in the Patiala House court over the JNU event that was held on February 9, 2016, to protest the hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru.
Kumar and Khalid questioned the filing of the charge sheet ahead of the Lok Sabha elections and said the police action was “politically motivated” and a “diversionary ploy” by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government. Kumar, Khalid and Bhattacharya — student leaders who were arrested over the event that triggered a political row between the government and Opposition parties — are out on bail. The maximum punishment for sedition is a life term.
Apart from 10 people charged with sedition, 36 others, including then JNUSU vice-president Shehla Rashid, Communist Party of India (CPI) leader D Raja’s daughter Aprajita, and students Rama Naga, Ashutosh Kumar and Banojyotsna Lahiri, have been mentioned in the charge sheet, with the police saying they are still gathering evidence linked to them. The charge sheet was filed in a sealed box before metropolitan magistrate Sumeet Anand.