Umar Khalid, a Jawaharlal Nehru University student whom Delhi Police had been looking for after he was accused of sedition, resurfaced on campus late on Sunday night. The 28-year-old returned to the university days after he had gone missing and gave a speech at the administration block. Police had been looking for Khalid since February 11.

Khalid addressed a meeting that started at around 10 pm close to the Administration Block on campus, where a crowd of more than 100 people had gathered. He said he would stand his ground, adding that "I have no summons against me."

Advertisement

Shehla Rashid, Vice President of the JNU Students Union also spoke to the crowd saying that those accused are innocent. "They are ready for whatever is going to happen. We know there is a plain clothes policeman here," Rashid said. "We want everything to happen in the glare of the cameras."

Reports from campus suggest other students, who were also named by the police as having been involved with organising the event commemorating the hanging of Afzal Guru, had returned to campus on Sunday as well.

Khalid had been one of several students formerly of the far-left Democratic Students Union accused of organising an event at the JNU campus where anti-national slogans were allegedly raised. Police had arrested JNU Students' Union President Kanhaiya Kumar in the case, charging him too with sedition, although video evidence after that arrest seems to suggest he wasn't involved in any of the sloganeering.

Police had issued a look-out notice for Khalid, as well as for the four other students who had all been charged with sedition based on the events of February 9, when videos caught crowds of students chanting 'azaadi' on the campus. Afterwards, much more speculation emerged in the media, attempting to connect the students to anti-national slogans raised two days later – which turned out to be based on doctored videos aired by a number of news channels.