2 nabbed for threatening violence on JNU campus

NEW DELHI: The Delhi Police has said that it apprehended two people accused of threatening to cause violence in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) on Independence Day, following a complaint by JNU students’ union on Sunday morning.

The complainant alleged that the threat was doled out in a video posted on the Facebook page of ‘Mahakal Youth Brigade’, police said.

Delhi police officials said they also received several PCR calls in the matter. “After receiving the PCR call, police personnel were deployed in plain clothes at all university gates. The caller came to police station and filed the complaint, also JNUSU office bearers wrote similar complaint, in which they alleged that the video promotes disharmony and enmity between religions, using inflammatory language and also openly issuing threats to [cause] physical hurt,” said DCP (Southwest Delhi) Ingit Pratap Singh.

A case has been registered under Section 153A (promoting enmity), 295A (insulting religious beliefs), 505 and 506 (criminal intimidation) of Indian Penal Code and an investigation is underway. The police have apprehended Uttam Nagar resident Vikas Sehrawat, who was identified as the person giving the call to violence in the video and Raja Kumar, 19, owner of the phone which was used to upload the video. Sehrawat was earlier arrested on August 10 for making inflammatory remarks against former Delhi MLA Alka Lamba. He was released on August 12.

The Facebook page of Mahakal Youth Brigade has been taken down. Bringing attention to the two videos posted on the Facebook page on August 9 and 14, JNUSU said it gave “an open call to gather and march” into JNU campus on August 15 between 2-6 pm to hoist a saffron flag. “Additionally, in both videos, there is an open call to violence against any student they encounter during their... hate speech towards Muslims,” JNUSU wrote in their police complaint.