The court slated the matter for April 7 for scrutiny of documents. All the accused were produced before the court.
NEW DELHI — A Delhi Court on Monday granted bail to seven accused in the 2016 Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) sedition case.
The court granted bail to Aquib Hussain, Mujeeb Hussain Gattoo, Muneeb Hussain Gattoo, Umar Gul, Rayeea Rassol, Khalid Bashir Bhat and Basharat Ali on personal bond of Rs 25,000.
Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya were already given bail by the court in the matter.
Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Pankaj Sharma directed for charge sheet to be supplied to all the ten accused.
“We order for supply of charge sheet. Let the charge sheet be supplied to all the accused persons today,” Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Pankaj Sharma said.
The court slated the matter for April 7 for scrutiny of documents. All the accused were produced before the court.
Last month, the court had taken cognizance of a charge sheet filed by the Delhi Police in 2016 Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) sedition case, in which Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid and eight others are the accused.
On February 9, 2016, ‘anti-national’ slogans were allegedly raised in the varsity during a programme called to protest against the death sentence handed out to Afzal Guru, a convict in the 2002 Parliament attack.
On Monday, Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Pankaj Sharma took cognisance of the offences – 124A (sedition), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 465 (forgery), 471 (using forged document), 143 (punishment for unlawful assembly), 149 (member of unlawful assembly), 147 (rioting) and 120B (criminal conspiracy).
“After careful perusal of the charge sheet and consideration of the material, all the accused persons mentioned herein above are summoned to face trial for the offence. Accused persons be summoned for 15.03.2021,” the judge stated in the order.
Cognisance was taken exactly one year after the Delhi government granted sanction to the Delhi Police to prosecute the accused, on February 27, 2020.
The 1,200-page charge sheet named these accused, and states that the Regional Forensic Science Laboratory (RFSL) retrieved the SMS sent by Umar Khalid to Kanhaiya Kumar to arrive at Sabarmati Dhaba, JNU, as their permission (to hold the protest) had been cancelled by the University administration.
The final pages of the charge sheet also confirm the presence of Kashmiri students during the protest and that they were in contact with Umar Khalid. — IANS
