Court tells cops to get govt 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 without 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 JNU students of sedition without his approval, and also wrote to the Delhi high court chief justice, apprising him of the matter.