Court to consider JNU sedition charge-sheet on March 11

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A Delhi Court on Thursday said it will begin hearing the sedition case filed against former JNU student leaders Kanhaiya Kumar and nine others on March 11.

Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Deepak Sherawat also said the court will proceed with the matter even if the Delhi government does not sanction prosecution of the accused.

The order came after Delhi Police informed the court that the state government is yet to reply to its request to prosecute the accused.

The court had earlier pulled up the police for filing the charge-sheet in the case without the sanction of competent authority.

In the last hearing, the court told the Delhi government not to sit on the police file seeking sanction to proceed in the case.

The court, after hearing the police submission on Thursday, said that it will watch the visuals of the incident.

The case involves a February 2016 event organised on the JNU campus against the hanging of Parliament attack mastermind Afzal Guru.

The Delhi Police had on January 14 filed a charge-sheet naming former JNU student leaders Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid, Anirban Bhattacharya and seven Kashmiri students as accused in the case.

The charges were slapped under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) dealing with sedition, voluntarily causing hurt, forgery, using as genuine a forged document, punishment for unlawful assembly, unlawful assembly with a common object, rioting and criminal conspiracy.

Both Kumar and Khalid have questioned the filing of the charge-sheet, saying it was "politically motivated" and a "diversionary ploy" by the Modi government ahead of the general elections.

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