Tanvi Sinha
Five years after the actual case, Kanhaiya Kumar Umar Khalid and others who faced sedition charges over the 2016 Jawaharlal Nehru University Campus sedition case have been summoned by a Delhi Court.
This comes almost a year after Delhi Police received sanctions to prosecute the students by the Delhi Government on 29th February 2020. The Delhi police had been reminding the government of approving this move before receiving the sanctions.
The charge sheet filed by the Delhi Police stated that Kumar, Khalid and others chanted seditious slogans and have been filed under Indian Penal Code sections 124A (sedition), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) 465 (forgery) 471(using as genuine a forged document or electronic record) 143, 149 (being a member of unlawful assembly), 147 (rioting) and 120B (criminal conspiracy).
In the five years that have passed since the case (due to delay of permission to prosecute being granted by the Delhi Government), Kanhaiya Kumar has since become a political leader and Khalid is in jail for Delhi riots related reasons.
The situation arose in 2016 when JNU students with Kanhaiya and Khalid on the lead protested the hanging of Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhat in solidarity with Kashmiri people’s democratic right to self-determination (according to a JNU student who was present at the event).
During this protest on February 9th 2016, there were said to be “anti-India” slogans raised, such as “Bharat ki barbadi tak Jung rahegi” and “India go back”, following which Kanhiya, Khalid and arrests had been arrested.