We have earlier reported on the chargesheet filed by the Special Cell of the Delhi Police against Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid and others on the celebration of terrorist Afzal Guru’s death anniversary at Jawaharlal Nehru University. Shehla Rashid and daughter of CPI leader D Raja also are mentioned in the chargesheet.
The chargesheet states that the JNU event was part of a planned conspiracy. It mentions that Kanhaiya Kumar was leading the pack of students who were sloganeering but it doesn’t state that he was raising anti-India slogans himself. The chargesheet also mentions that as varsity President, Kanhaiya had failed in his duty to stop the event.
#NewsAlert — CNN-News18 accesses chargesheet copy on JNU row. | @Nitisha_Kashyap with more details #JNUSeditionCase pic.twitter.com/Mk30Vr7aNT
— News18 (@CNNnews18) January 15, 2019
As per a Hindustan Times report, the Police said it took them 3 years to file the chargesheet because of multiple visits to different states, numerous sessions of questioning and the necessity of collecting information in a covert manner. The Police are reported to have said that young officers posed as students and entered the campus to gather information about the event on the 9th of February, 2016.
Delhi Police made 13 visits to Jammu and Kashmir. Burhan Wani’s death delayed proceedings by seven to eight months as there was a lack of support from J&K Police in the aftermath of the violence that ensued.
“We formed a team of young police officers who posed as students and spent time in the campus. They also used to go in groups at events in campus and eavesdrop on conversations related to the protests. It helped us in tracing links related to the seven suspects,” a senior officer from Delhi Police told Hindustan Times. “We traced their call details and once their links with the suspects were confirmed, they were called in for questioning. This is how we identified and tracked them.”
The Police said that initially the suspects denied their involvement but when they were confronted with evidence, they confessed to participating in the event. “We gave them a questionnaire to ascertain the sequence of events on February 9. All of them denied their presence. But we confronted them with the evidence after which they admitted,” the officer is reported to have said.
As we had earlier reported, Kanhaiya Kumar has responded to the chargesheet by calling it a case of political vendetta. He questioned the timing of the chargesheet and asserted that the NDA government was merely trying to provide Prime Minister Narendra Modi with talking points before the elections later this year.
The report by Hindustan Times does seem to answer Kanhaiya’s questions regarding the timing of the chargesheet. But it’s unlikely that it will have any takers from the opposition camp.
