Protests against India student leader’s arrest spread

Former Delhi University lecturer S.A.R. Geelani, also arrested for organising a similar meeting at the Press Club of India, was on Thursday sent to 14 days in judicial custody.

He said BCI has taken a serious view of the incidents and termed it “shameful” and added “handful of lawyers have done this”.

Expressing solidarity with JNU students and teachers, Jama’at-e-Islami (JeI) Jammu and Kashmir Thursday condemned the “callous” attitude of New-Delhi. The AISF activists had come from Sonepat in support of Kumar who also hails from the same organisation.

While comrade Kumar was arrested for “sedition” (a charge that Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had demanded to be removed), it is clearly a deliberate blow to political freedom and a awful suppression of student voices. “They can call Kanhaiya a threat to nation but cannot protect him from other threats”, his mother Meena Devi told PTI from Bihar over phone.

Police resorted to lathicharge to bring the situation under control. If the master tells them to shoot, they will shoot. “Their master is (the) central government…”

A huge number of them held roses in their hands and raised them in the air in unison at the start of the march and shouted slogans in defiance.

Sources claimed Umar Khalid, a member of the Delhi Students Union which organised the event, is the son of a former chief of Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), SQR Ilyasi. “A day after violence by lawyers at a Delhi court hearing on arrested JNU student Kanhaiya Kumar, the Supreme Court warned against provocative statements and said, “We are keeping an eye on the law and order situation at Patiala House court”. The police had issued them a notice asking to summon at 3 pm.

She said Kumar was invoking his fundamental right under Article 32 by moving the Supreme court for bail. “The scenes of utter lawlessness playing out on the premises of the court in the heart of the capital are an affront to the democratic ideals of the country” the delegation said in a memorandum submitted to the President. Something extraordinary is going on in this country. Kumar was arrested for organizing an event and allegedly raising anti-national slogans to commemorate Afzal Guru who was hanged to death in 2013.

Asima Mukhtar, 24, a Ramjas College student, who joined the protest along with some of her friends, said, “It doesn’t matter we are DU or some other university”.