Kanhaiya Kumar, others charged with sedition

A special cell of the Delhi Police on Monday filed a 12,000-page charge-sheet against student leaders Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid, Anirban Bhattacharya and eight others in a sedition case for allegedly raising ‘anti-national slogans’ during an event on the Jawaharlal Nehru University campus in February 2016.

The police said they have evidence to proceed against the ten students, seven of who are from Jammu and Kashmir — Aquib Hussain, Mujeeb Hussain, Muneeb Hussain, Umar Gul, Rayeea Rassol, Bashir Bhat and Basharat. The chargesheet has also named 36 others, including CPI leader D Raja’s daughter Aprajita, then JNUSU vice-president Shehla Rashid, Rama Naga, Ashutosh Kumar and Banojyotsna Lahiri, adding that there is no direct evidence against them.

Metropolitan magistrate Sumit Anand is expected to take up the charge-sheet on Tuesday. The charges have been filed under sections 124 A (sedition), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 465 (forgery), 471 (using as genuine, forged document), 143 (punishment for unlawful assembly), 149 (unlawful assembly with common object), 147 (rioting) and 120B of the Indian Penal Code. The charge-sheet filed by at the Patiala House court is based on an FIR filed days after the event, on February 9, 2016, to protest the hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru.


The FIR stated that “anti-national” slogans were raised at the event which was carried out despite the varsity administration cancelling the permission after the ABVP fileda complaint.