Two Indian university students were arrested yesterday and face sedition charges after they surrendered following protests in New Delhi where anti-India slogans were allegedly shouted, police said.
After avoiding arrest for more than a week, the two came out of Jawaharlal Nehru University campus late on Tuesday with some students forming a chain around them and gave themselves up to the police.
New Delhi Police spokesman Rajan Bhagat said the two were questioned and arrested yesterday.
The two deny the charges.
Jawaharlal Nehru University Student Union president Kanhaiya Kumar was arrested earlier over his participation in the events on Feb. 9 when anti-India slogans calling for the destruction of India and independence for the Indian portion of Kashmir were allegedly shouted.
After Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya surrendered on Tuesday night, police were still looking for three other students from the prestigious university who have been missing for more than a week and presumed to be in hiding.
Khalid and Bhattacharya returned to the campus two days ago. Police did not enter the campus, but waited outside for them to come out and surrender.
Thousands of protesters from New Delhi’s two main universities marched near parliament on Tuesday, demanding Kumar’s immediate release and accusing supporters of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party of creating political turmoil in the city’s universities by leveling the anti-India charges.
In Srinagar on Tuesday, Kashmir University students demanded the release of Delhi University lecturer S.A.R. Geelani, who was arrested last week on sedition charges for organizing a separate event in the Indian capital earlier this month where anti-India slogans were allegedly shouted along with criticism of the secret hanging in 2013 of a Kashmiri separatist convicted of attacking parliament.
Opposition politicians raised the issue in parliament yesterday and Mayawati, leader of the Bahujan Samaj Party, a party of the lowest castes, accused Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government and his ruling party of suppressing freedom of expression and fanning communal tensions.
Mayawati uses only one name.
Lawmakers belonging to communist parties also protested at parliament, accusing the government of attacking democracy and people’s constitutional rights.
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