Notably, JNU Students Union (JNUSU) President Kanhaiyya Kumar has already been arrested on Friday that has further enraged the students at the varsity.
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Amid the state of furore at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, the Delhi Police on Tuesday morning arrested former Delhi University lecturer S.A.R. Geelani on sedition charges over allegedly organising an event at the Press Club of India in Delhi. “It wants to dictate what students think, understand and say”.
Hundreds of angry students protested Kumar’s arrest and are accusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government of trying to control student activism on campuses.
Anindito Mukherjee/ReutersA man walks past graffiti inside the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) campus in New Delhi, India, February 15, 2016. Why cant’ we wait to see how the situation unfolds? “We don’t stand for this”, said a JNUSA member. A large section of civil society in India have been terming Afzal Guru’s hanging as “judicial murder”.
While the first case specifically relates to the scuffle that took place inside the premises of the court, the second was registered for the scuffle between BJP MLA O P Sharma and CPI activist Ameeque Jamai outside Gate no. 2 of the court.
The PhD student said his arrest would affect his thesis.
Kanhaiya will be produced in court again on Wednesday but his lawyer Bankim Kulsreshtha said it was unlikely to be at Patiala House. Police sent us a letter saying that an FIR had been lodged against some unnamed people on sedition charges and that they wanted our cooperation in investigating the incident. A spokesman did not answer calls to his mobile phone on Monday seeking comment.
“The best course of action would be that these students or the teachers should identify those exact elements, who were part of that protest and hand them over to the police”.
The fracas has again exposed the fault lines in India over Modi’s polarizing government, which has been accused of favoring majority Hindus and clamping down on religious minorities, journalists and others deemed to oppose its conservative policies.
There has been a series of attacks on churches, while writers have returned awards in protest over the government’s silence over a series of murders of secular scholars.At least 18 university campuses witnessed protests on Monday.
At least three students were thrashed by the group of men.
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“It’s too much of a design to impose ideology of ABVP, which is the student wing of RSS in educational institutions”, Kumar told reporters after “Janata Ke Darbar Mein Mukhya Mantri” programme.
