Sedition case: Opinion among JNU students divided over police move

NEW DELHI: Ideological divisions at Jawaharlal Nehru University were reflected on Tuesday in the reaction of students to the Central government filing a charge sheet against former JNU Students Union president Kanhaiya Kumar and others.

The Delhi Police Special Cell on Monday filed a charge sheet against Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid, Anirbhan Bhattacharya and seven Kashmiri students for raising “anti-national” slogans during an event in the university three years ago to commemorate Afzal Guru.

A PhD student of Culture Studies at JNU said the campus was being targeted by the BJP-led Central government to divert people’s attention from important issues. “The government is diverting (attention) from their own failure by bringing this issue just before the Lok Sabha elections. The police claim to have sufficient evidence, and we know those videos are doctored. There were no anti-national slogans raised. Rather, Kashmiris were provoked by ABVP boys, who called them terrorists. Kanhaiya was not even there when the dispute between ABVP and others took place. He came to sort out the matter,” she said.

A student of Linguistics, said: “There is nothing anti-India in this campus. It is all pro-democracy. The government violated legal procedures to hang Afzal Guru.” The event in 2016, she said, was organised against the death penalty, “not in favour of terrorism or anti-nationalism”. 

A researcher at the university’s Sanskrit department, Raghuveer Mishra, said that Kanhaiya and others deserved “the same punishment as Afzal Guru and Yakub Menon”.

“I have known Kanhaiya, Umar and Anirbhan personally. They are nice men, but if they have committed a crime, they should be punished. They can’t be entirely blamed as terror organisations and left-wingers have influenced them,” he said.