Cops will probe Sharjeel Imam on Jamia and Aligarh speeches

NEW DELHI: Delhi Police on Wednesday got the custody of JNU PhD scholar Sharjeel Imam, arrested on alleged sedition charges, for five days after he was brought to the city on a transit remand and produced before a magistrate at Saket. The UP police may seek his custody after Delhi Police interrogates him at length, a source said.
The cops initially planned to produce Sharjeel at the Patiala house courts.But the situation turned tense as some lawyers raised slogans against Sharjeel and held posters calling him a “traitor”. They also demanded that Sharjeel be hanged. Police finally decided to produce him before chief metropolitan magistrate Purushottam Pathak at his residence in Saket.
A joint team of Delhi and Bihar police on Tuesday arrested Sharjeel from Bihar’s Jehanabad district. Sharjeel, against whom cases have been filed in five states, will be probed for his alleged role in inciting violence at Delhi Gate, Jamia Millia and Seelampur with a speech he delivered at Jamia on December 13. He will also be questioned about his speech at Aligarh in Uttar Pradesh on December 16.
In an FIR on January 25, Delhi Police mentioned that in the December 13 speech, Sharjeel was seen instigating the crowd against the policies adopted by the successive Indian governments. He had allegedly claimed that Muslims were being forcefully sent to the neighbouring countries on different pretexts by various government agencies.
Later, the FIR mentioned, he was seen asking youths to do something that would “light the fire among Muslims” and claimed to be the “spark that would light the fire”. Police claimed a crowd had gathered to listen to the speech and two days after it, violence erupted. A police source claimed that some people arrested after the Jamia violence had said they were inspired by his speech.
While registering the FIR, the cops took note of the speech in Aligarh where he had reportedly spoken about cutting off the Northeast from the rest of India at the “chicken’s neck” near Siliguri.
Police will also probe Sharjeel’s association with organisations like Popular Front of India, suspected of fuelling trouble during the Citizenship Amendment Act protests.
In the meantime, the JNU Teachers’ Front (JNUTF), a splinter group of the JNU Teachers’ Association (JNUTA), has criticised the teachers’ body for coming out in Sharjeel’s support. “The support shown by JNUTA (on January 28) towards the person accused of ‘sedition’ tantamounts to providing support to ‘anti-national’ and anarchic elements of society,” JNUTF said.
The core committee of JNUTF, which broke away from JNUTA last year, also claimed that the majority of JNU teachers didn’t endorse JNUTA’s statement.
Reacting to the statement, JNUTA president D K Lobiyal said, “We have maintained that what the student said doesn’t warrant sedition charges. We are against the manner in which laws like these are enforced and that is what we said in our statement.”