The Delhi Police on Monday opposed bail for Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union president Kanhaiya Kumar, in spite of telling the Delhi High Court that they do not have any video evidence against the student leader. The police said Kumar cannot be seen shouting anti-national slogans as alleged, but there are witnesses who claim he did, including JNU officials, chief security officers and students, reported ANI. Kumar refuted the police's claim, saying there were other "masked" people who had raised anti-national slogans. The Delhi government told the court that since there is no video evidence, he should be given bail, adding that no innocent person can be punished. The court reserved its order on Kumar's bail plea for March 2.
A Delhi court earlier extended the police custody of two other JNU students, Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya, by one day. The two students had fled the JNU campus when Kumar was arrested on February 12, before returning a week ago and surrendering to the Delhi police on February 23. Earlier on Monday, the Supreme Court had declined to hear a petition seeking criminal contempt proceedings against Kumar, Khalid, former Delhi University lecturer SAR Geelani and four others for their involvement in an event organised on February 9, the death anniversary of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru, reported ANI.
Former JNUSU president Ashutosh Kumar was also questioned for the second day on Monday regarding his role in the event. The police said that they were not satisfied with his answers and that they might call him for another round of interrogation. Inspector General of police in Bastar, Chhattisgarh, also said Khalid could be linked to a conspiracy surrounding an attack on tribal rights leader Soni Sori. Khalid had mentioned Sori and Jagdalpur Legal Aid Group in a speech when he returned to JNU.
The Times of India reported that a new set of controversial pamphlets had surfaced on the campus, in which India is called "a prison house of nationalities like Kashmiris, Tamils, Nagas, etc". The flyers were published by the New Materialists – a student group that tends to the far Left in their politics. In the pamphlets, the group called nationalism a disease, and described Hinduism as “an ideology of Brahminism that upholds the institution of socio-economic oppression called the caste system.“
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