Decide on sanction to prosecute Kanhaiya till Jul 23: Court to govt

NEW DELHI: A Delhi court on Monday gave the AAP government time till July 23 to decide on granting sanction to prosecute former JNU Student's Union president Kanhaiya Kumar and his co-accused in the 2016 JNU sedition case.

Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Deepak Sherawat granted specific time to the Delhi government which had earlier told the court that it will take over a month to decide whether to grant sanction to prosecute Kumar and others in the case. Earlier, AAP government had told the Patiala House Court that it needed some time to assess the charges.

The Aam Aadmi Party-led Delhi government had last week told the Patiala House Court that it needed a month's time to decide whether to grant sanction to prosecute. At a subsequent hearing on April 5, the Delhi government claimed that the police had filed the chargesheet in the sedition case in January "secretly and in a hasty manner without sanction from competent authority".

Additional Public Prosecutor Vikas Singh told the court last week that the government is looking into the matter and awaiting the opinion of its Standing Counsel (Criminal) Rahul Mehra. The government further said that they needed time to decide whether the accused's actions amounted to sedition. The court had also directed police to ask the authorities concerned to expedite the process while granting it three weeks to procure the sanction needed to prosecute Kumar and other accused, including former JNU students Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya, in the case.

They have been charged under IPC 124 A (sedition), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 465 (forgery), 471 (using as genuine, forged document), 143 (punishment for unlawful assembly), 149 (unlawful assembly with common object), 147 (rioting) and 120B. The three students, who were arrested on February 11, 2016, are out on bail.

On January 14, the police had filed a chargesheet naming student activists Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya in the sedition case involving an on-campus protest in February 2016. The other accused include Kashmiri students Aquib Hussain, Mujeeb Hussain, Muneeb Hussain, Umar Gul, Rayeea Rasool and Bashir Bhat. On January 19, the court criticised the police for filing the chargesheet without the approval of the Delhi government. The court also later censured the the AAP government for delaying the process of granting sanctions.

Kumar, Khalid and Bhattacharya were arrested in February 2016 on sedition charges for their involvement in a protest in which several students allegedly shouted " anti national" slogans. The protest, which was against the hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru, had led to outrage by Hindutva groups.