When confronted with JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar, his sedition case co-accused Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya maintained that their actions at the controversial February 9 event were independent of Kumar and that none of them had raised any anti-India slogans, said sources.
On Friday, Kumar was brought to the police station where the duo is being interrogated for the past two days and was subjected to face-to-face questioning. The JNUSU president was brought on a day-long police custody from Tihar Jail where he was questioned for nearly nine hours in two rounds.
In the first round of questioning, he was confronted with Umar and Anirban individually, while in the second round all three were brought together and asked to clarify their positions during the event in which anti-India slogans were allegedly raised.
“In both these rounds of interrogation, the duo did not seem to be too familiar with Kumar. Their responses to our queries as well as their versions of the incident focused more on individual participation and what they themselves did on February 9 rather than any co-ordination with each other,” said the source.
It is further learnt that the three were shown a video of the incident and confronted with the questions. Umar and Anirban were further asked about Kumar’s speech at Ganga Dhaba two days later and whether there was anything seditious about it. They, however, denied that this to be the case.
However, there have been contradictions in the way they have described the sequence of events, said the source.
They were also asked about other students whose names featured in the invitation pamphlet and their roles. Yet again, all three chose to confine their responses to their own participation and activities, sources added.
Kanhaiya back in Tihar
JNU students’ union president Kanhaiya Kumar was sent back to Tihar Jail on Friday after his one-day police remand expired. Police have not pressed for further custody, saying they did not need him any longer for investigation. A Metropolitan Magistrate sent Kumar back to judicial custody, while holding the remand proceedings at the office of a senior police officer in South Delhi with confidentiality in view of the Delhi High Court’s directions.
Police had sought a day’s custody of Kanhaiya Kumar on Thursday for confronting him with Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya. Kumar was arrested on February 12.
Even as his judicial remand expires on March 2, the High Court is set to hear his bail application on Monday. Police are also likely to seek further remand of Umar and Anirban, whose custody expires on Saturday. While the two have co-operated in the interrogation, a challenge they face is the duo’s reluctance to sign or even see any document related to the case presented before them. The police believe they are doing so according to the instructions given by their lawyers.
Delhi Police start evidence filing process
The evidence that the police have compiled so far includes the letters exchanged between them and the university as far as the statements of other eyewitnesses.
The police are confident that posters used in the JNU event would be used to prove criminality and serve as an evidence for criminal conspiracy. The evidence further includes video footage of the event, which will be sent to the Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL) once again.
Police have identified nearly two dozen people who were present at the time of the pro-Afzal Guru event, but are yet to identify who were the students, teachers and outsiders among them.
Other details like the department and whether they stayed in the hostel are also awaited. Police are also yet to identify the people who had their faces covered during the event.
