A Delhi court Saturday rapped the Delhi Police in the JNU sedition case and asked them why it had filed a chargesheet without taking an approval from the legal department. “You don’t have approval from legal department, why did you file chargesheet without approval?” the court asked. The Delhi Police, in the meantime, said they will get the sanction approval within 10 days.
The court grants Delhi Police time till February 6 to get the requisite approval of the legal department by that time.
The court had set January 19 for consideration of chargesheet against former Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union (JNUSU) president Kanhaiya Kumar and others in the 2016 JNU sedition case. The chargesheet was filed against Kanhaiya and others by the Delhi Police on Monday, saying he was leading a procession and supported seditious slogans raised on the varsity campus on February 9, 2016, at an event to commemorate the hanging of Parliament-attack mastermind Afzal Guru.
Police also charged former JNU students Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya for allegedly shouting anti-India slogans during the event.
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.
