Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya, students of Jawaharlal Nehru University who were accused of sedition, have surrendered to the Delhi Police around midnight Wednesday. Khalid and Bhattacharya left the administrative block of JNU in a car and were consequently taken into custody by the Delhi Police.
This comes hours after the Delhi High Court denied the two students interim protection from arrest and asked them to surrender to the police at a place of their choice, and follow the due process of law. The two had offered to surrender to the court instead, citing the assault on Kanhaiya Kumar on February 12. They were not arrested earlier as the police decided to honour JNU vice-chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar's decision to not let them enter the campus.
Shehla Rashid, vice-president of the JNU Students Union, confirmed the arrests. She said in a statement, "...they have placed their faith in the law and we hope that they will be released soon." Khalid and Bhattacharya had reportedly organised an event at JNU on February 9 to protest the hanging of Afzal Guru, the 2001 Parliament attack convict. At this event, allegedly anti-national slogans were raised.
On February 12, Kanhaiya Kumar, president of the JNU students' union, was picked up by the Delhi Police from the campus and arrested on sedition charges. Khalid and Bhattacharya went into hiding following the arrest, only to resurface at the campus on Sunday night. After their return, the two students sat on a vigil in a public area in the campus, along with a group of other students. The purpose of the vigil was to ensure that any further arrests by the Delhi Police followed proper procedure.
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