The BJP supporters called the reporters and students anti-nationals and demanded they leave India and go to Pakistan, the country’s archrival and Muslim-majority neighbor.
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India’s sedition laws were drafted by its British colonial rulers to suppress the country’s freedom struggle and in recent years the country’s Supreme Court has said that those laws should be invoked only when there is actual evidence of incitement to violence.
Kumar was arrested last week for sedition, after giving a speech questioning the hanging in 2013 of Mohammad Afzal Guru over his role in the 2001 attack on parliament.
The Jawaharlal Nehru University students union president was arrested on sedition charges for allegedly raising anti-national slogans in the university campus recently. Ice Cream Alchemy is featured on menus across Denver.
But before the student arrived there, two groups of lawyers clashed as they shouted competing slogans supporting or deriding JNU or the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University.
A scuffle broke out today between JNU students and a group of men in lawyer’s robes outside Patiala House court in New Delhi, hearing sedition case against Kanhaiya Kumar.
The officials, quoted by news agency, also said that the anti-India slogans were raised by students belonging to Democratic Students Union (DSU), considered to be a front of CPI (Maoists).
Several political commenters said the arrest is an attempt to silence dissent.
Kanhaiya was assaulted by lawyers while being produced in court.
According to a Delhi Police Special Branch report submitted to the Ministry of Home Affairs, Kanhaiya Kumar was not responsible for organising the programme in support of hanged Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru.
Home Minister Rajnath Singh reiterated on Sunday that “anyone who raises anti-India slogans or tries to question national unity will not be spared by this government”. Academics at foreign universities, including Harvard, Cambridge and Yale, also extended support. “Some 500 teachers have gathered near the university’s administrative block with banners to show their solidarity with the students”, said Om Prasad of the All India Students Association.
Meanwhile S.A.R Geelani, a former Delhi University lecturer, was arrested early today on the same charge in connection with another event marking Guru’s death.
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Members of the media covering Monday’s hearing were also targeted by the mob, with a reporter for the Hindu saying he personally witnessed two journalists being slapped and kicked. Journalist unions accused police of standing by during the attacks.
