JNU Sedition Charge Sheet: All 14 Student Witnesses Linked to ABVP

The 14 JNU students listed as witnesses include 12 from ABVP, and two of its sympathisers.

JNU students protest against the government crackdown on JNU in Delhi on Thursday, 18 February 2016

(Photo: AP)

The Delhi police has named 77 witnesses, including 24 police personnel, 14 JNU students and four employees of Zee News, in its sedition charge sheet filed in connection with the 9 February, 2016 event in JNU, reported The Indian Express.

The 14 witnesses from JNU named in the charge sheet include 12 from Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) and two of its sympathisers, according to The Indian Express.

Sandip Kumar Singh is a former JNU unit secretary (2012-13) and national executive member (2013-14) of the ABVP. He had also contested for the post of general secretary in the JNU Students’ Union (JNUSU) elections in 2012 and lost.

Onkar Srivastava is the state executive member of the ABVP who has previously been the organisation’s JNU unit joint secretary (2014-15) and vice-president (2016-17). In September last year, he alleged he was beaten up by left activists in the aftermath of the JNUSU elections.

Although not an ABVP member, Akhilesh Pathak is a sympathiser of the organisation. Last year, along with the other ABVP members, he was accused of disrupting the JNUSU election counting. He was critical of the 9 February incident, as well as the incident at Ramjas College in 2017, when clashes broke out between ABVP and Left organisations, reported The Indian Express.

Alok Kumar Singh is the current national convenor of ABVP’s research wing. He was the JNU unit president of the ABVP in 2016 when the 9 February incident took place. In March last year, Singh courted controversy when he sent out a document on behalf of professor Atul Johri, who was accused of sexual harassment by nine students, from his personal number, in response to the allegations.

Former JNUSU Joint Secretary of ABVP Saurabh Sharma, former Office Secretary of the ABVP’s JNU unit Ankur Aryan, President of ABVP’s SIS unit Bhaskar Jyoti, former Joint Secretary of ABVP’s JNU unit Priyadarshi, current Delhi State Joint Secretary of ABVP Anima Sonkar, former Joint Secretary of ABVP’s JNU unit Sukant Arya, former ABVP JNU Unit Vice-President Binit Lal, former Executive Member of ABVP Shruti Agnihotri, Current Councillor of the School of Computational and Integrative Sciences (SCIS) Ram Nayan Verma and ABVP supporter Ram Nayan Verma, are the 14 witnesses named in the charge sheet, reported The Indian Express.

(With inputs from The Indian Express.)