After five JNU students, including Umar Khalid, Anirban Bhattacharya and Ashutosh, who have been sought by the police in connection with a sedition case, surfaced in the campus, JNU students and teachers on Monday appealed to the vice-chancellor, Prof. M. Jagadesh Kumar, to take a stand and persuade the Delhi police to withdraw charges of sedition and criminal conspiracy against all students.
The JNU administration has called a meeting of top officials called by Prof. Jagadesh Kumar to discuss the resurfacing of five students in the campus.
Sources in the Delhi police said they will ask the vice-chancellor to hand over the students to them rather than forcing them to crack down on the campus. The Delhi police personnel are positioned outside the JNU campus since Sunday night after they got inputs about presence of the students. JNU registrar Bupinder Zutshi said he got to know about the presence of the students on the campus from media reports and has not heard from any of them so far.
In the appeal to the V-C, JNU Students’ Union vice-president Shehla Rasid Shora said, “The students were in hiding because they feared mob lynching and have returned when (they) believed that some normalcy returned to the campus. We want the university V-C to take a stand like Jadavpur University and AMU that the police will not come on campus.”
Ms Shora added that the V-C should also demand from the Delhi police that all charges against the students be dropped as it vitiates academic atmosphere. A demand in this regard has been sent to the JNU vice-chancellor. The JNUSU also said the administration has not approached them for a meeting. “If they want us to share responsibility of handing over these students to the police, we will not abide by that,” she added. The JNU Teachers’ Association (JNUTA), meanwhile, in an meeting held on Monday morning passed a resolution demanding that the internal mechanism of the university should be allowed to work but only after re-construction of the inquiry panel. “We also appeal the administration to maintain a conducive atmosphere to help students appear before the panel.” JNUTA president Ajay Patnaik said, “Even legal luminaries have said that the sedition charge cannot be imposed frivolously, that too on students for mere shouting of slogans. We want the university to take a stand and get these charges dropped.”
Later in the day, over 300 JNUTA members met the vice-chancellor and demanded that the university should work for withdrawal of sedition and criminal conspiracy charges against the students, terminating ongoing inquiry and conducting impartial inquiry by a reconstituted committee. The JNUTA also demanded removal of registrar Bupinder Zutshi alleging that he is an RSS agent.
