Student leader’s sedition arrest leads to protest at India university

Mr Pathak said Ms Mayawati’s statement clearly protects an anti-national activist JNU president Kanihaya Kumar who has been arrested on sedition charges when he was seen shouting anti-Indian slogans during the meeting. Bassi, however, admitted that the police have so far found no evidence linking the Lashkar-e-Taiba to the incident.

The group also began to check the identity cards of journalists and asked them also to leave the courtroom.

Yashaswi Mishra, another FSA member, said, “They called FTII students anti-national, they called Rohith and his friends anti-national and now they are labelling the whole of JNU as the same”.

The men, who appeared to be lawyers were also heard shouting slogans like “Long Live India, down with JNU”.

Amid a row over an event at JNU, RSS leader Dattatreya Hosabale has alleged that it was a result of a “conspiracy” and those who raised slogans in support of Pakistan and Afzal Guru are “traitors” and should be charged with treason. “The BJP should not try to impose its ideology on the country”, he said. “We have our internal mechanism which is well equipped to deal with the situation” Ajai Patnaik President of JNU Teachers Association (JNUTA) told Express.

The students, who have been demanding Kumar’s release, alleged that they were roughed up by a group of lawyers when they entered the court premises. Denying that innocent students are being targeted, he said, “I have given all the necessary directions to officials to punish the offenders and not to harass the innocents”, he added.

“That Hafiz Saeed supported the JNU protests is a very serious charge to level against the students”. He said Saeed either did it himself or used a proxy.

Journalists also saw O.P. Sharma, one of the three BJP legislators in the Delhi assembly, chasing and hitting a JNU student outside the court.

“Cracking down on students & using #HafizSaeed to justify the crack down is a new low, even for this NDA government”.

Last month a young scholar from India’s lowest Dalit caste committed suicide, sparking protests over social discrimination after he was suspended from Hyderabad University for allegedly assaulting the head of the student wing of Modi’s party.

In the largest protest, thousands of students and academics at New Delhi’s prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) boycotted classes and erected barricades for a fourth day in an escalating conflict with the authorities.

Separatist Mohammed Afzal Guru was hanged in 2013 over a deadly attack on the Indian Parliament in 2001.