JNU: Cops questioned over chargesheet without approval

New Delhi, January 19

A court here today questioned the Delhi Police over filing a chargesheet against former Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union president Kanhaiya Kumar and others in a 2016 sedition case without procuring requisite sanctions.

Metropolitan Magistrate Deepak Sherawat granted the police time till February 6 to procure requisite sanctions after they told the court they would get approvals within 10 days.

“Why did you file (the chargesheet) without approval? You don’t have a legal department?” the court said. The court is likely to resume hearing on the matter soon.

The police, on January 14, filed the chargesheet in a city court against Kumar and others, saying he was leading a procession and supported seditious slogans raised on the varsity campus during an event in February 2016.

It also charged former JNU students Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya for allegedly shouting anti-India slogans during the event held on February 9, 2016, to mark the hanging of Parliament-attack mastermind Afzal Guru.

Earlier, they had claimed before the court that Kumar had raised anti-India slogans in 2016 “to incite hatred and disaffection towards the government”.

The police cited statements of witnesses in its chargesheet to state that Kumar was walking along with the protesters where a number of unidentified persons were raising slogans during the event.

The evidence listed by the agency include report of JNU’s high-level committee, statement of varsity’s registrar Bhupinder Jutshi and the mobile phone recordings in which Kumar was seen arguing with him over the cancellation of the programme.

The police said a video shot by a news channel and clips shot by students present at the spot showed that Khalid, Bhattacharya and Ashutosh were raising slogans.

It, however, added that the slogans raised by Ashutosh were not anti-national, unlike those by Khalid and Bhattacharya. Khalid raised slogans as shown in the videos and mobile clips, the police said. Regarding Rama Naga, whose name appears in column 12, the chargesheet said he delivered speech with contents against the RSS. — PTI