Finally, Delhi High Court on Wednesday granted six-month interim bail to Kanhaiya Kumar, the Jawaharlal Nehru Students’ Union president who was arrested on sedition charge. Kanhaiya was lodged in the Tihar Jail under judicial custody. Looking at the whole saga, I strongly feel that Narendra Modi government will not come to the power in the next general election. The raising of sedition issue is one of the examples where a 150 year old law is being used to suppress the rational views. The law which was used by colonial masters to suppress descent with colonial power is still used by us. Now, we are living in a very different atmosphere where India is a socialist, secular and democratic nation. If someone wears a belt made up of cow skin, eats beef or any other animal’s meat, then he is labelled as anti-national. This only means that we should subscribe to such views otherwise we have to leave India. The need of the hour is to delete the law of sedition from IPC else in future the government may book many under this law to chock voices.
In spite of all sorts of conspiracy, the court gave relief to Kanhaiya by asking him to furnish a personal bond of Rs. 10,000 and a surety of like amount. The high court made it clear that a JNU faculty member has to stand as surety for Kanhaiya. Justice Pratibha Rani had reserved the order after over three hours of hearing on the bail plea of Kanhaiya, accused of raising anti-India slogans inside JNU campus during an event organised on February 9. During the hearing, while Kanhaiya’s counsel had argued that the student leader had never raised any slogans against the nation, Delhi Police had maintained that there was evidence that he and others were shouting anti-India slogans and were holding Afzal Guru’s posters. The bench had also asked tough questions to the police on slapping sedition charge on the accused and asked it to show evidence against him of his “active role” in raising anti-India slogans. While giving bail to him, the high court listed out certain conditions, including that he will have to cooperate in the investigation in the case and present himself before the investigators as and when required. Kanhaiya had also distanced himself from Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya, the two other accused arrested in the case.
Earlier, the Delhi Police had interrogated Kanhaiya, Khalid and Anirban together for a day at RK Puram police station following which police identified as many as 22 persons who allegedly participated in the JNU event but there is no proof against any one of them. Delhi Police miserably failed to prove its claims. Meanwhile, India Today has managed to exclusively access the report of the forensics laboratory which examined the Kanhaiya Kumar’s so called ‘sedition’ videos. A total of seven videos had been sent by the Delhi government for forensics examination. The final supplementary report submitted by Truth Labs to the Delhi Government has confirmed the India Today investigation, which had exposed how the Kanhaiya video had been doctored with. Out of the seven videos, shot at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, that had been sent for forensic examination, two have been found to be fake. A video which had gone viral on social media, are to be fake. This video was labelled as clinching proof of Kanhaiya raising seditious slogans in the Jawaharlal University campus. The video shot at JNU was from February 11, two days after the now infamous pro-Afzal, anti-India event organised by the Democratic Student’s Union. The video was played up aggressively by some Hindi and English news channels.
Here, somebody might have taken the audio from the video which was shot on February 9 and overlaid it on the video that was shot two days later on February 11, which is why the audio that can be heard is completely different? Forensic probe report said that the manipulation of two videos but brings to fore that voices of persons not present in the clips were added. It implies those anti-national slogans were not raised on camera. Should those leave those who had doctored the video, upload and distributed on social media as gospel truth for creating a hostile environment and giving a tag of anti national to scholars and students? Earlier, a video shows rising of anti-India slogans, the slogan-raising youth’s faces were covered. It too conveys the identity of those who raised slogans is not known to public at large. In this scenario, those people who manipulated the videos by adding voices of persons not present in video and those who shouted slogans with faces covered qualifies to a tag of traitors of the nation?
Please unmask the masked people in the video. Delhi Police had noticed the covered faces those were shouting anti-national slogans in a video that was in public circulation since then. Their competence, logic and investigative acumen including legal righteousness are just mind-boggling and they are in charge of the Capital of India and working directly under Home Ministry. Here, should I mention the fake Hafiz Saeed twitter account reference which was given by our intelligent Home Minister for filing a ‘sedition’ cases on students belonging to opposing party union. Narendra Modi has been an utter disappointment. He has disenchanted on all fronts because, he felt with the mandate BJP received, things should be cake walk for the party. How wrong he proved himself. He just allowed elements in the party to ride on him and his success. Instead of reining them in, he had been a silent spectator! He has not administered the country effectively and failed to lead the country from the front. His utter silence on atrocities inflicted on the helpless minorities, explain everything. The lists of his failures are long and still growing. In some days, people will wonder, why they elected him. We know, political parties believe in divide and rule. They skillfully brainwash us through media, creating issues which polarize us for political gains. Congress did that by seudo-secularism and BJP is doing through seudo-nationalism. Meanwhile, the real issues like poverty, education and development took a backseat. If we really proud ourself as an Indians then it’s our duty that we should not be trapped in these polarization, disharmony and distrust.
The idea of India developed by RSS-BJP was forcefully argued by HRD Minister. She even invoked caste and religion during the debate. However, she missed the important point mentioned in our Constitution that there is no place for religion. It is a private affair and the State cannot intervene. Thereby, for the time such unacceptable had happened in the Parliament. It can’t be denied that RSS is pursing the anti-nationalist boggy and there cannot be a better place than Universities.
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