A Blot Forever: Twitter on Delhi Govt’s Nod to Prosecute Kanhaiya

In 2019, the Delhi Police had filed a charge sheet against Kumar and others such as former JNU student Umar Khalid.

File photo of Kanhaiya Kumar.

(Photo: AP)

Several social media users have criticised Delhi government’s go-ahead to the city police to prosecute former JNUSU President Kanhaiya Kumar and nine others in connection with a 2016 sedition case.

Thanking the government and calling for a speedy trial, Kumar on Friday, 28 February, said that the charge sheet was filed for the first time when he was about to contest the election and pointed out that now, too, it has happened when elections are going to be held in Bihar.

On 14 January last year, the Delhi police had filed a charge sheet against Kumar and others, including former JNU students Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya.

The police had said the accused led a procession and had supported the seditious slogans allegedly raised an event on Parliament-attack accused Afzal Guru at the JNU campus.

Former Union Minister P Chidambaram took to Twitter to share that he disapproved the sanction given to prosecute Kumar. Other Twitter users, too, disapproved of the move and said, “Kejriwal will carry the blot forever.”

In July last year, the Delhi government’s standing counsel Rahul Mehra, when asked for an opinion on the 2016 case, had reportedly said that activities of the accused “do not amount to sedition against the State” and that the evidence on record was “flimsy” and riddled with “gaps”.

Mehra, after examining the original complaint, the findings of JNU’s High-Level Committee, and the transcript of the entire incident, had come to the conclusion that there was material error on the part of police in filing the charge sheet, according to The Indian Express.