A Delhi court on Tuesday granted police two more months to get sanction from the city government to prosecute former Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union (JNUSU) president Kanhaiya Kumar and others in a sedition case.
The case pertains to the raising of “objectionable” slogans at an event in 2016 against the hanging of Afzal Guru, the mastermind behind the 2013 Parliament attack. Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (CMM) Manish Khurana extended the deadline after the court was told that no sanction had been received from the city government’s Home Department.
The CMM has also asked the Deputy Commissioner of Police (Special Cell) to file a status report on the issue and posted the matter for further hearing on September 18.
The court has been deferring taking cognisance of the chargesheet in the case since the probe report was filed by the police without sanction from the city government in January this year. At that time, the police had said it would get the required sanction within 10 days.
In April, the government had said that the police charge-sheeted the accused in a “hasty and secretive manner” without taking prior prosecution sanction from the competent authority. It had then promised to the court that it would take more than a month to decide on the probe agency’s request for prosecution sanction.
According to law
Section 196 of the Criminal Procedure Code states that “no court shall take cognisance of any offence punishable under Chapter VI of the IPC except with the previous sanction of the Central government or of the State government”. Section 124A (sedition) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), under which the accused persons have also been charge-sheeted, is placed under this chapter.
The accused have also been charge-sheeted under IPC Sections 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 465 (forgery), 471 (using as genuine, forged document), 143 (punishment for unlawful assembly, 149 (unlawful assembly with common object), 147 (rioting) and 120B (criminal conspiracy).
