Indian police charge 10 students with sedition

By Shuriah Niazi

NEW DELHI, India (AA) – Indian police on Monday charged at least 10 students with sedition for allegedly raising “anti-India” slogans at a Kashmir-related event held three years ago in New Delhi, local media reported.

The police filed a charge-sheet in a Delhi court in a case filed in February 2016 against “anti-national” sloganeering allegedly by students during an event to commemorate the death anniversary of Muhammad Afzal Guru at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), daily Times of India reported.

Guru, who belonged to Kashmir, was convicted of the Indian Parliament attacks in 2001. He was hanged to death on Feb. 09, 2013 in Tihar jail and buried there.

Terming the charge-sheet as “politically motivated”, Kanhaiya Kumar, one of the accused in the case, told Anadolu Agency: “I have faith in the judiciary of this country. They [government] have filed charge-sheet ahead of general elections, which shows that they want to take political mileage from the case.”

Kumar was president of the students union at the varsity when he was arrested along with another student leader Umar Khalid. A case was registered against them following the event but the duo was later released on bail.

As many as 36 others have been named in the charge-sheet but there is insufficient evidence against them, media reports said.

Expressing hope that “truth will prevail”, Khalid said in a Facebook post that the government had been "exposed".
“[…] no amount of lies would be enough to hide their failures, their anti-poor, anti-farmer, anti-worker, anti-Dalit, anti-minority moves, their corruption, their fake-nationalism, and their desperation […],” he wrote.

The government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been rocked by protests by farmers and lower-caste Hindus.

The court will consider the charge-sheet on Tuesday, local media stated.

At least seven students named in the charge-sheet belong to disputed Jammu and Kashmir.

* Riyaz ul Khaliq contributed to the report from Ankara