Three men attempted to attack the president of the Jawaharlal Nehru University student's union, Kanhaiya Kumar, on Tuesday as he addressed a rally in central Delhi to protest the detention of fellow students Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya and former Delhi University professor SAR Geelani on charges of sedition.

The three men were stopped by the crowd, before being detained by the Delhi Police.

Also on Tuesday, a Delhi court extended the judicial custody of Khalid and Bhattacharya by a fortnight. They have been in jail since March 1, after they were accused of organising an event at JNU at which anti-national slogans were allegedly chanted.

On Tuesday afternoon, students marched across central Delhi to demand that the sedition cases against Khalid, Bhattacharya and Geelani be dropped. Speaking to the protesters, Kanhaiya Kumar, who was given bail on March 1 after being arrested on similar sedition charges, attacked the Modi government for its politics on the issue of nationalism.

"The Jan Sangh was burning the Indian flag in 1947 but the BJP has suddenly picked it up in 2016," Kumar said, referring to reports that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh had desecrated the tricolour after Gandhi's assassination. "We have been waving the flag since 1947 and know the worth of the flag."

Sitaram Yechury, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), also addressed the rally, assuring the students that his party stood in solidarity with them.