he Delhi Police on Friday interrogated JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar, students Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya together for the first time at a South Delhi police station in connection with the sedition case against them.
The questioning started in the early hours and lasted around five hours, before it resumed around 10.30 a.m. The interrogation took place at R.K. Puram police station, a source said. In the first round of questioning, Kumar was confronted with Khalid and Bhattacharya separately. In the second round, the three were grilled together. The interrogation is being conducted by at least two teams, said the source.
He claimed that Kanhaiya has so far maintained that on February 9, he came out of his room only when he got to know about a possible confrontation between two groups over the event inside the campus and has dissociated himself with the event. While Khalid has so far denied indulging in any anti-national sloganeering, Bhattacharya challenged claims that the slogans pointed out by the police were anti-national in nature, the source claimed.
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By questioning the three together, the police are also trying to ascertain who the organiser of the event was, what steps were taken to stop what had happened there and the identities of the outsiders spotted in the video footage of the event.
The police also showed them raw footage of the video of the February 9 event to ascertain identities of others involved in it, especially whom the police had earlier termed as “foreign elements”.
In the statement attached with the FIR, police had identified Umar and Anirban as the “main organisers” and later in the court, the investigators mentioned about the presence of “foreign elements” (outsiders) in the event.
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A Delhi court had on Thursday sent Kumar to one-day police custody after the prosecution said that he was needed to be confronted with the other two arrested JNU students Khalid and Bhattacharya in view of the discrepancies in their statements regarding the controversial JNU event.
Kumar back in Tihar
Kanhaiya Kumar was sent back to Tihar jail by a Delhi Court on completion of the police remand, after the police told the court that they did not need his further custody, said Kumar’s counsel.
Around 4.20 p.m., Kumar left the premises of the R.K. Puram police station for Tihar, a source said, adding that police is likely to seek further remand of Khalid and Bhattacharya, whose police custody ends on Saturday. — PTI