CPI (M) leader Brinda Karat on Friday said that the "manufactured sedition charges" with "particular political motive" against former Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) president Kanahiya Kumar and others should be dropped.
Speaking to ANI about the reports claiming that Delhi government has dropped sedition charges against Kumar and others in JNU 2016 case, Karat said, "If justice is to be done then there is no doubt that the manufactured charges with particular motive should be dropped."
Demanding free and fair probe, she said, "Any impartial probe that is not tainted by the political motive, which the BJP and RSS have to defame the Left and the entire institution of the JNU, will find that there was nothing seditious about what happened."
Extending support to Kumar, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) Polit Bureau member Karat said, "Kanhaiya Kumar was not in the least involved in any of it."
Karat's response comes hours after Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal refuted media reports which claimed that his government has rejected a request for sanction by Delhi Police to prosecute Kumar and others in the JNU sedition case.
"I have been told that no decision has been taken so far in the case. News that's being spread is just a speculation," Kejriwal said here at a press conference this morning.
On July 23 this year, Delhi Police was granted time till September 18 to obtain the requisite sanction in the JNU sedition case.
On April 5, the Delhi Government had submitted a reply before the Special CBI court stating that the Delhi Police had filed the charge sheet in the case in a "secretive" and "hasty" manner, without obtaining approval of the appropriate authority.
On April 3, the AAP-led Delhi government had informed the court that it would take a month to decide whether to grant sanction to prosecute Kumar and others.
The police in its charge sheet filed in January this year had contended that there were videos wherein Kumar could be seen on February 9, 2016 "leading the students who were raising anti-national slogans" in the JNU campus and that he had been identified by witnesses.
The police have charged Kumar, Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya with raising 'anti-national slogans' during an event, which was organised to mark the hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru.
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