Students: Will CBI probe be impartial?

New Delhi: Reacting on the transferring of the Najeeb Ahmed case from Delhi police to the CBI, the JNU students said even as they welcome the order, they are apprehensive if the CBI would be given a free hand.

More than six months after JNU student Najeeb Ahmed went missing, the Delhi high court on Tuesday transferred the case to CBI after the crime branch of Delhi Police failed to trace him.

The students of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) wondered if the government’s investigation agency would be given a free hand to probe the disappearance of the JNU student.

“It is a good move, but we were demanding an independent enquiry monitored by the court. Even the CBI functions under the ambit of the central government and can be influenced as we have seen in several cases,” JNU students’ union (JNUSU) president Mohit Kumar Pandey said.

Former JNUSU vice president Shehla Rashid said a court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT), “something that is free of Modi government’s influence”, would have been a better move.

The student disappeared on October 14, 2016, a day after he allegedly had an altercation with students of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi  Parishad, a students’ group affiliated to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. The ABVP has denied any involvement in Najeeb’s disappearance.

“It is a very good step. We have to trust the system. We hope Najeeb is found,” the general secretary of the Alumni Association of JNU, Devendra Choubey, said. JNU student Rahul Rajkhowa, who mentioned Najeeb in a rap song, said it was “essential” that the CBI took over the case. “We hope the investigation is taken up in a fair manner,” he added.