A court in India capital of New Delhi framed charges under sedition against a Muslim university student for allegedly making inflammatory speeches against a contentious citizenship law based on a police report registered against him in January 2020.
Sharjeel Imam, 33, a history student at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi, angered Hindu nationalists in the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) with what they claimed was a seditious call for the restive northeastern region of Assam to be “cut” from the rest of the country.
At the time, Sambit Patra, a BJP spokesman, described Imam’s comment as a call for “open jihad”.
Imam denied the allegations and said his prosecution was a “whip of a monarch rather than a government established by law”.
He later told Reuters he had only called for railway and road links to Assam to be disrupted as part of the ongoing campaign of protests against the citizenship law.
Justice Amitabh Rawat framed the charges under Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections 124-A (sedition), 153-A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, etc), 153-B (imputations, assertions prejudicial to national integration), 505 (statements conducing to public mischief) along with Section 13 (punishment for unlawful activities) of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), the Indian Express reported on Monday.
The court of Justice Rawat also rejected Imam’s request for bail in the case.
The prosecution, during arguments, told the court Imam’s speeches give a clear indication that Muslims have no hope and his alleged call to burn detention camps was not peaceful.
Imam’s counsel had submitted that without criticism, a society dies and becomes a heap of sheep. They argued there was nothing in the impugned speech made by Imam that “directly or indirectly calls for violence”.
“He, through his speeches, repeatedly incited the public to commit acts which would jeopardise public tranquillity, attempts to cause disaffection towards a lawfully elected government of the country in the garb of democratically opposing the CAA. His oration and acts are seditious in nature,” states the charge sheet against Imam.
