Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya with the then JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar at JNU campus, after released from Tihar jail, in Delhi on March 18th 2016. (Express photo by Ravi Kanojia/File).In its chargesheet in the sedition case filed against former JNU students, Delhi Police have relied on video footage from six mobile phones, of which at least three belong to current or former members of the ABVP’s JNU unit, and one belongs to a constable.
Police have, in their chargesheet, also cited raw footage collected by Zee News and a debate aired on the TV, channel to build their case against the accused in the sedition case, filed in connection with a February 9, 2016, event in JNU held to mark the hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru.
Police have affixed a total of 12 video transcripts in the annexures of the chargesheet. According to the chargesheet, an iPhone 6 belonging to JNU student Jaspreet Singh, which had 13 videos of the incident, was handed over to police after they served a seizure memo. The Auxus mobile phone handed over by Saurabh Sharma, former JNUSU joint secretary from ABVP, has 14 videos, the chargesheet states.
A Micromax phone belonging to Alok Kumar, the former ABVP JNU unit president, had 20 videos, and a Lenovo phone and a Sandisk memory card belonging to Onkar Srivastava, an ABVP member, had one video, it further states.
An Auxus mobile phone belonging to a JNU student, Anand Kumar, was also seized. Police also relied on a 20-minute video shot by constable Dharmbir on his Samsung J-5 mobile phone.
The chargesheet further states that police seized a video camera belonging to M/s Zee News, of Panasonic model. Eleven screenshots from a CD given by Zee News were prepared from the footage recovered. The annexure also lists a debate aired on February 10 on Zee News as part of the evidence.
Police also relied on 13 emails to strengthen their case against the accused. Police, in their chargesheet, claim that “Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya exchanged incriminatory posters to excite disaffection towards the idea of India and by advocating the terrorist acts committed by Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhatt by glamourising them”.
The last few emails exchanged between the accused suggests a sense of panic after the February 9 event and the blowback to it. One of the emails reads: “We must make it clear that the programme was against capital punishment of Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhatt, which amounts to judicial murder, and the self-determination of Kashmiris,” states the chargesheet.
Another email, the chargesheet said, speaks of apprehensions that the JNUSU joint secretary from ABVP would try and disrupt the event since he did not allow the screening of Muzaffarnagar Baaki Hai on the campus.
