Sedition charge against Kanhaiya Kumar, nine others
Kumar described the chargesheet as “politically motivated†and questioned its timing, just months ahead of the Lok Sabha polls.
New Delhi: Nearly three years after former JNU student leader Kanhaiya Kumar and nine others were accused of raising anti-India slogans, the Delhi police on Monday charged them with sedition.
Kumar described the chargesheet as “politically motivated” and questioned its timing, just months ahead of the Lok Sabha polls.
The 1,200-page chargesheet in which former Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) students Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya were also arrayed as accused was filed before metropolitan magistrate Sumit Anand who put it up for consideration before Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (CMM) on Tuesday.
Kumar, Khalid and Bhattacharya were arrested and later got bail. It will be left to the CMM whether or not to take cognisance of the charge sheet in what is known as the JNU sedition case.
The maximum punishment for sedition is life term. The police claimed it has video clips to prove the offence which has been corroborated by the statements of the witnesses and that Kumar was leading a procession and allegedly supported seditious slogans raised on the JNU campus in February 2016.