New Delhi| A Delhi court has taken cognizance of a charge sheet filed against Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid and eight others accused in the 2016 Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) sedition case. He has now been summoned on 15 March. Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Pankaj Sharma took cognizance of the offenses on Monday, which included 124A (sedition), 323 (voluntarily injuring), 465 (forgery), 471 (using forged documents), 143 (unlawful gathering Punishment for), 149 (unlawfully gathering members), 147 (rioting) and 120B (criminal conspiracy).
The judge said in the order, “After considering the charge sheet and material, all the above-accused persons have been called to face trial for the crime. The accused have been summoned on 15.03.2021.”
The cognizance has been taken exactly one year after the Delhi Police cleared the Delhi Police on 17 February 2020 to prosecute the accused.
Apart from Kanhaiya and Umar, others include Anirban Bhattacharya, Kashmiri students Aqib Hussain, Mujib Hussain, Munib Hussain Gattu, Umar Gul, Raiya Rasool, Bashir Bhat and Basharat Ali.
The 1,200-page charge sheet said that the Regional Forensic Science Laboratory (RFSL) had retrieved the SMS sent by Omar Khalid to Kanhaiya Kumar, asking Kanhaiya to reach JNU’s Sabarmati Dhaba as permission to protest The university administration refused to give.
The last pages of the charge sheet also confirm the presence of Kashmiri students during the protest and that they were in contact with Umar Khalid.
On February 9, 2016, during the program called to protest the hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru on Jawaharlal Nehru University campus, he allegedly raised anti-national slogans.
