Kanhaiya Kumar Welcomes Delhi Govt's Prosecution Move

Delhi’s Arvind Kejriwal government has given its approval for a trial in a sedition case against 10 people, including former Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) Students’ Union president Kanhaiya Kumar, student leader Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya.

Kanhaiya Kumar and Umar Khalid have welcomed this decision of the Delhi government. They have said that this matter should go to court so that the truth is revealed to the nation and fact is separated from fiction.

.@kanhaiyakumar and @UmarKhalidJNU welcome @ArvindKejriwal-led #DelhiGovernment's permission to @DelhiPolice to prosecute them and eight others in a 2016 #JNU #seditioncase, saying the case must go in court so that the country comes to know the truth@iankushchoubey pic.twitter.com/eH8VwXjApV

— GoNewsIndia (@GoNews_India) February 29, 2020

Student leader Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya also released a statement. Umar Khalid wrote on his Twitter handle, “The news of Delhi govt granting sanction to sedition case against us doesn’t trouble us at all. We are confident of our innocence, have full faith in the judiciary & have ourselves been demanding the case against us to be tried in the courts.” He wrote further, “The ensuing trial will vindicate us & prove that the media trial at the behest of the ruling regime was false, malicious & politically motivated.” 

(3/3) And as we will defend ourselves in the court, we will expose the lies of the ruling regime and its fake claims of being nationalist.

— Umar Khalid (@UmarKhalidJNU) February 28, 2020

Apart from Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya, permission to conduct a sedition trial against seven other people has also been granted. This petition of the Delhi Police had been pending with the Delhi government since January 14, 2019.

Making this an election issue during the recent Delhi assembly elections, Home Minister Amit Shah had tried to encircle the Aam Aadmi Party government over it. Shah had said in all election rallies that action should be taken against people raising seditious slogans but the Delhi government is not granting sanction to conduct trials against the accused.

This case of sedition is related to the JNU. The Delhi Police has claimed in its chargesheet that anti-national sloganeering took place in JNU on February 9, 2016. Erstwhile JNU Students’ Union president Kanhaiya Kumar and others had been made accused in this incident of sloganeering.

At that time, the Delhi Police had filed a case of sedition against Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya and arrested them but all of them had been released on bail after a few days.