A court in Delhi on Monday asked the police to provide Communist Party of India leader Kanhaiya Kumar, activist Umar Khalid and eight others the chargesheet filed in a 2016 sedition case, reported the Hindustan Times. Both of them are former students of the Jawaharlal Nehru University.

The Delhi Police’s anti-terrorism wing Special Cell had filed a chargesheet in the case in January 2019, naming Kumar and Khalid along with student activist Anirban Bhattacharya in the sedition case.

The other accused include Kashmiri students Aquib Hussain, Mujeeb Hussain, Muneeb Hussain, Umar Gul, Rayees Rasool and Basharat Ali and Bashir Bhatt. During the hearing on Monday, all of them were given bail on furnishing of a personal bond of Rs 25,000 each.

Kumar, Khalid and Bhattacharya were already given bail in the matter. The court will hear the sedition case next on April 7.

Khalid, who is in prison in a case related to the Delhi violence, sought permission to meet his family members, according to Live Law. The court granted him 10 minutes.

Sedition case

Kumar and other accused were summoned to the court after the Delhi government gave the sanction to prosecute the accused.

The police had said the accused chanted “anti-national” slogans at a campus event in February 2016 marking the death anniversary of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru. Kumar was the president of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union at the time of the incident, which had become a national flashpoint in 2016.

The Delhi Police cited both oral and electronic evidence to press sedition and other charges against Kumar. The police possess video footage where Kumar “is seen leading the students, who were raising anti-national slogans (sic.)”, the chargesheet said.

Kumar and others also face charges under Indian Penal Code Sections 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 465 (forgery), 471 (using as genuine a forged document or electronic record), 143, 149 (being a member of an unlawful assembly), 147 (rioting) and 120B (criminal conspiracy).

The wait for a prosecution sanction against the accused had been a bone of contention between the Aam Aadmi Party government in Delhi and the Centre. Several Bharatiya Janata Party leaders had accused AAP of shielding the students by not giving the go-ahead.