New Delhi: The Uttar Pradesh police on Thursday said the sedition charges against 14 students of Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) will be dropped since “no evidence was found to substantiate it”.
The charge was levied on February 12 after a clash following a confrontation with a crew of Republic TV. An FIR was filed Tuesday based on a complaint by a BJP Yuva Morcha leader Mukesh Lodhi who said the ‘hundreds’ of AMU students surrounded his vehicle, assaulted him and fired at him. The complaint also accused the students of shouting pro-Pakistan and anti-India slogans.
The university’s students’ union denied the charges saying the FIR is “false and fabricated”.
Ashutosh Dwivedi, the superintendent of police (Aligarh city), told Scroll.in that sedition charge was added to the FIR due to the nature of allegations. However, “After preliminary inquiry, no evidence was found to substantiate it,” and so the sedition charge “shall be dropped.”
The development has come after the police looked into video evidence of the incident where no such chanting of slogans can be seen. “We are not so much casual that we will sustain such charges against students if there is no evidence. We will absolutely drop it. But we need to be confirmed that there is no evidence to back this charge,” Aligarh’s senior police officer Akash Kulhari told NDTV.
Also read: Solidarity Is the Best Form of Self-Defence for Students of AMU
He said that while there was no “prime evidence regarding sedition in this case,” the police has identified 17 people – including five outsiders – who were “involved in violence that took place on the campus.”
“We have forwarded their names to the AMU administration, along with a list of 15 complaints sent by the complainants,” Kulhari further told Indian Express as saying.
The complaints will be joined together as a single FIR once the university conducts an internal probe.
The incident
The university student union claimed a Republic TV team and “some associates of RSS and BJP entered the campus with malafide intention”.
Student union president Salman Imtiaz said the reporters asked farcical questions and accused AMU of participating in “terror and anti-national activities”.
“When the AMU students challenged the said media reporters on its manner of questions and asked them to seek permission from relevant authorities, the reporters heckled the students, and the female reporter threatened to frame false sexual harassment charges against the students,” he said.
Also read: After Fracas with Republic TV, AMU Students Booked for Sedition
Meanwhile, Republic TV claimed its crew was ‘manhandled’ by students. A reporter denied allegations that they tried to provoke students, tweeting that they were on campus but “reporting on a story that had NOTHING to do with AMU”.
After the fracas, suspected members of BJP and its affiliates, allegedly armed with guns, started attacking the AMU students. Imtiaz said the students fought back in self-defence.
Following the incident, one complaint was filed against the journalists for entering the campus without permission. The second was made against ‘unidentified miscreants’ for arson and unlawful activities.
The university also suspended eight students on complaints of assault and violence.