JNU student leader Kanhaiya Kumar, arrested for sedition, on Thursday moved the Supreme Court for bail as students rallied in support across the country and the opposition took the row to President Pranab Mukherjee.
A Supreme Court bench led by Justices J Chelameswar and Abhay Manohar Sapre said Kumar’s plea will be heard on Friday morning.
His lawyer Vrinda Grover told the judges that the atmosphere in the Patiala House Courts, where the accused was allegedly assaulted by a group of lawyers, was not conducive for moving the bail application.
She said Kumar was invoking his fundamental right under Article 32 by moving the Supreme Court for bail.
Senior counsel Soli Sorabjee will argue for Kumar, while senior advocate Raju Ramachandran, who addressed the Supreme Court today according to ANI , is also part of his legal team.
The bail plea came as the JNU issue - triggered by a meeting on Kashmir at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) - sparked student protests in Delhi, West Bengal, Bihar and Karnataka with protestors demanding Kumar’s release and dropping of sedition charges against him.
The 28-year-old student leader was arrested on 12 February 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. Kumar has denied the charges.
Former Delhi University lecturer SAR Geelani, also arrested for organising a similar meeting at the Press Club of India, was on Thursday sent to 14 days in judicial custody. Both Geelani and Kumar will be in Tihar Jail.
Kumar, the first president of the JNU Students Union from the CPI-affiliated AISF, drew support from the Congress, Left and Delhi’s ruling Aam Aadmi Party which denounced the government for “high handedness”.
Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi and other party leaders told President Mukherjee that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was trying to impose a “flawed” and “dead” ideology of the RSS on the student community.
“It is not the government’s job to destroy institutions. This nation will prosper because of our students’ imagination. Imposing an ideology on them will not benefit the nation,” he told reporters.
Gandhi said Kumar’s arrest for sedition and the violence witnessed at the Patiala House Courts here on Monday and Wednesday had sent out “bad signals” about India and damaged its global image.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal also met the president and blamed the central government for the violence in the Patiala House Courts.
Kejriwal said Delhi Police would not have remained silent during the violence if they were not directed to do so.
“Delhi Police is a uniformed force… If its master says don’t do anything, they won’t do anything. If the master tells them to shoot, they will shoot,” Kejriwal said. “Their master is (the) central government… This is the dictatorship of the prime minister (Modi).”
Delhi Police Commissioner BS Bassi, however, denied that Kumar was assaulted in the court on Wednesday and justified the sedition charge. He said police had evidence to prove this.
“Free speech does not mean you can violate the … constitution,” he told CNN-IBN
The Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) said the JNU Students Union didn’t organise the 9 February meeting where anti-India slogans were supposedly raised.
Calling Kumar’s arrest “an over the top reaction”, it said it was “a deliberate political intervention by the BJP government” as the RSS and BJP had always been ranged against the JNU, where Left student unions have for decades enjoyed huge support.
On Thursday, thousands of students from universities and colleges staged a massive protest in Delhi to demand Kumar’s release. Several teachers, lawyers, activists and theatre artists joined them.
In Patna, similar protests led to clashes between activists of the All India Students Federation (AISF) and Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the RSS student wing. Student protests in support of Kumar were also reported from Jadavpur in West Bengal and Bengaluru.
Under Article 32, a citizen can move the Supreme Court for enforcing his fundamental rights.
Comments
One of these lawyers on TV today said that he did not know or care if Kanhaiya was innocent of sedition as he did not know the facts, he said sedition should remain an offence etc. Surely Kanhaiya deserves better legal representation. A few days ago this lawyer told the Media that raising slogans like Hindustan Murdabad might be seditious. This lawyer wants Kanhaiya to undergo a trial for sedition. This lawyer also wants the trial to be transferred out of Patiaa House court.
Another one of these lawyers also said more or less the same thing.
Can't Kanhaiya get some lawyers who believe in his innocence and in his case.
And is it ethical for a lawyer to appear for Kanhaiya in such a controversial and sensitive case before the Supreme Court tomorrow if he does not believe in Kanhaiya's innocence and does not know the facts.
One of them said this on TV as part of two different TV show panels.
The second was broadcast last evening.
Watch those. Sorabjee said I don't know the facts and that whether Kanhaiya Kumar committed sedition was a question of fact which the court would determine in a trial.
Sorabjee's only point in favor of Kanhaiya was that he should not be beaten up pre-trial.
Both Kamini Jaiswal and Rajiv Dhawan said on TV yesterday that Kanhaiya was innocent, and was being framed, and that nothing he had done amounted to sedition.
The most important thing is we don't know how badly Kanhaiya is injured. If he is now "disappeared" under the pretext of securing him and if a secret trial outside Patiala House Courts happen, Kanhaiya will remain in danger.
Rajiv Dhawan yesterday wanted the trial to remain in Patiala House and for the reports, documents and video filed before the Supreme Court to be made public. I support this.
Only a public and open court proceeding that can be attended by Kanhaiya's supporters and the Press will be fair.
The medical report on injuries to Kanhaiya Kumar should have been made public.
The Supreme Court today must direct a full medical examination of Kanhaiya at AIIMS.
The cursory examination by doctors at Patiala House was obviously not enough.
The Delhi High Court must order a complete medical examination at AIIMS for Kanhaiya Kumar.
Secondly, in the 7th paragraph while referring to Afzal Guru as "Kashmiri militant blamed for terror attack on Indian Parliament in 2001" I'd like to draw attention. Afzal wasn't just blamed, rather was convicted for the same as per the law of the land..............please take notice.