JNU sedition case: Delhi court takes cognisance of chargesheet against Kanhaiya Kumar, others

New Delhi: A court here has taken cognisance of a chargesheet filed by the Delhi Police against former Jawaharlal Nehru University Students” Union (JNUSU) President Kanhaiya Kumar and nine others in a 2016 sedition case and summoned them on March 15.

Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (CMM) Pankaj Sharma on Monday took the cognisance of the final report almost a year after the Delhi Police received requisite sanctions to prosecute the accused in the case, court sources said.

Kumar and others, including former JNU students Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya, were accused of raising anti-India slogans.

The other seven accused chargesheeted in the case are Kashmiri students Aquib Hussain, Mujeeb Hussain, Muneeb Hussain, Umar Gul, Rayeea Rassol, Bashir Bhat and Basharat, some of them were then studying in JNU, Aligarh Muslim University and Jamia Millia Islamia.

As many as 36 others, including Communist Party of India (CPI) leader D Raja”s daughter Aprajita, Shehla Rashid (then vice-JNUSU president), Rama Naga, Ashutosh Kumar and Banojyotsna Lahiri, all former students of JNU, have been named in column 12 of the chargesheet due to insufficient evidence against them.

The accused have been charged with offences under sections 124A (sedition), 323 (punishment for voluntarily causing hurt), 471 (using as genuine a forged document or electronic record), 143 (punishment for being a member of an unlawful assembly), 149 (being a member of an unlawful assembly), 147 (punishment for rioting) and 120B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

A case was registered on February 11, 2016 under sections 124A and 120B of the IPC against unidentified people at the Vasant Kunj (north) Police Station, following complaints from Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Maheish Girri and the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of the RSS.