Court tells police to get govt’s sanction in JNU sedition case
NEW DELHI: A Delhi court on Wednesday directed the Delhi Police to ask the state government to expedite the process of deciding on granting sanction to prosecute former Jawaharlal Nehu University students’ union president Kanhaiya Kumar and nine others in a sedition case.
“Authorities can’t sit on the file indefinitely,” said chief metropolitan magistrate Deepak Sehrawat. “After filing of the chargesheet, no department can sit on its hand with the file with regard to the sanction. The concerned department would do well to speed up the matter regarding the sanction.”
The court adjourned the matter till February 28.
According to the charge sheet, Kumar and others had allegedly shouted anti-india slogans in the varsity campus on February 9, 2016. Under the code of criminal procedure (CRPC), investigating agencies have to get sanction from the state government while filing charge sheets in sedition cases. It is only after that the court will take cognisance of the charge sheet and begin the process for the framing of charges.
On January 19, the court had rapped the Delhi Police for filing the charge sheet in the case with- out procuring the requisite sanctions.
According to government records, the file is with Delhi Home Minister Satyendar Jain.
On Tuesday, officials of the Delhi home department said that they were going through the charge sheet and examining each evidence. The officials also said that police had sent them the copy of the charge sheet just two hours before they submitted it in court on January 14.
Apart from Kumar, former JNU students Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya were also named in the sedition case along with charges of criminal conspiracy, unlawful assembly, rioting and voluntarily causing hurt.
Police in their first information report said the former students and a few outsiders, who were invited to the campus, had held a rally inside JNU to mark the death anniversary of 2001 Parliament attack case convict Afzal Guru, and Kashmiri separatist Maqbool Bhatt.
Last month, Delhi law minister Kailash Gahlot issued a show cause notice to the principal secretary (law) for clearing the sanction to prosecute former Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) students of sedition without his approval, and also wrote to the Delhi high court chief justice, apprising him of the matter.
The law minister’s showcause notice to principal secretary (law) AK Mendiratta pointed to Rule 13 of the transaction of business rules, which states no decision or views can be communicated by any principal secretary without the approval of the minister in-charge.
Senior officials in the law department said Mendiratta, in his reply, stated how under the devolution of powers, subjects related to prosecution sanctions are supposed to be handled by the Delhi government’s home department.
Gahlot rejected this argument. NEW DELHI: Two members of the Sadam Gauri gang were arrested for allegedly extorting money from bootleggers and gamblers on the pretext of providing them security, police said on Wednesday.
The accused were identified as Pankaj (22) and Karan (21), both residents of Hastal in Uttam Nagar, they added.
Acting on a tip-off that the accused would come near the Nawada metro station on the intervening night of February 4 and 5, the police nabbed the duo, Additional Commissioner of Police (crime) Rajiv Ranjan said.
The accused were wanted in an attempt to murder case, wherein they, along with their associates, had attacked the houses of bootleggers in the Uttam Nagar area in order to extort money from them, the officer said, adding that the two had also fired gunshots at a fruit vendor.