Student arrest protests spread across India

The court directed its secretary general to forthwith transfer Kanhaiya’s writ petition and related papers to the high court.

“There was an issue with paperwork and the bail application will likely be heard on Monday (by the Delhi High Court)”, a member of Kumar’s legal team told AFP.

Meanwhile, thousands of students from universities and colleges across New Delhi staged a massive protest here on Thursday to condemn the arrest of JNU student leader Kanhaiya Kumar on sedition charges.

The bail petition filed in the Supreme Court by Mr Kumar’s legal counsel on Thursday sought a “fair trial”, adding: “His lawyers fear the safety of their life and limb and are unable to present his case before the concerned court of law”.

The 28-year-old student leader was arrested on February 12 for allegedly raising anti-national slogans at the JNU event three days earlier against the 2013 execution of Afzal Guru, the Kashmiri militant blamed for the terror attack on Indian parliament in 2001.

During the hearing before Metropolitan Magistrate Lovleen, only six lawyers representing Kanhaiya were allowed to be inside the court room along with a JNU professor and five journalists.

Now that he is in Tihar jail, Kanhaiya Kumar should follow the example of Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal.

The lawyers had defied the Supreme Court’s orders banning protests and barged into the court complex before the hearing.

“I had tried to bring to your notice that Kanhaiya Kumar was not produced in the court on February 15 but his counsel had said so and it came in the order”. “Policemen escorting Kanhaiya have denied the allegations of him getting beaten up by lawyers”, Bassi said.

In a scathing attack on the role of the police, it said the statement which was issued by the force as an appeal on behalf of Kumar was not written by him voluntarily.

Kumar said in his petition there was no need for his custodial interrogation as he has already been sent to judicial custody. The Delhi Police failed to adequately protect him at the time of his production for remand proceedings, and he was violently assaulted by the gathered crowd of lawyers and by one person inside the courtroom.

However, lawyers for the Union government and Delhi Police, including Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar, Additional Solicitor General Tushar Mehta and senior advocate Ajit K. Sinha objected to their stand.