NEW DELHI—
Dozens of lawyers, many
with links to India's ruling nationalist party, clashed Wednesday with
protesters demanding the release of a student leader arrested under
India's colonial-era sedition laws.
The clashes took place ahead of a court hearing for Kanhaiya Kumar, the president of the students' union at the country's premier Jawaharlal Nehru University. Kumar has been in prison since Friday.
Soon afterward, a grimacing and cowering Kumar was escorted onto the court premises on foot by a few policemen. Several reports said that he was punched and kicked as he was taken inside the courtroom.
At least one reporter also said that the lawyers beat him up and broke his cellphone while the police looked on.
The attacks and Kumar's arrest highlighted allegations of increasing of intolerance in India since Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in 2014.
Kumar, a left-leaning campus leader, is accused of sedition for participating in events where slogans against India allegedly were shouted along with criticism of the 2013 secret hanging of a Kashmiri separatist convicted of an attack on Parliament. His arrest took place after a student faction linked to the BJP filed a police complaint.
The lawyers waved Indian flags and chanted slogans like “glory to Mother India” and “traitors leave India.” Many of the lawyers seen on television footage Wednesday had been involved in similar violence Monday when reporters and Kumar's supporters were beaten outside the court premises.
Delhi Police chief B.S. Bassi has said that the police were trying to identifying those involved in the violence but have made no arrests despite several newspapers naming the lawyers and publishing their photographs prominently.
India's sedition laws were drafted by its British colonial rulers to suppress the country's freedom struggle and in recent years the country's Supreme Court has said that those laws should be invoked only when there is actual evidence of incitement to violence.
The clashes took place ahead of a court hearing for Kanhaiya Kumar, the president of the students' union at the country's premier Jawaharlal Nehru University. Kumar has been in prison since Friday.
Soon afterward, a grimacing and cowering Kumar was escorted onto the court premises on foot by a few policemen. Several reports said that he was punched and kicked as he was taken inside the courtroom.
At least one reporter also said that the lawyers beat him up and broke his cellphone while the police looked on.
The attacks and Kumar's arrest highlighted allegations of increasing of intolerance in India since Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in 2014.
Kumar, a left-leaning campus leader, is accused of sedition for participating in events where slogans against India allegedly were shouted along with criticism of the 2013 secret hanging of a Kashmiri separatist convicted of an attack on Parliament. His arrest took place after a student faction linked to the BJP filed a police complaint.
The lawyers waved Indian flags and chanted slogans like “glory to Mother India” and “traitors leave India.” Many of the lawyers seen on television footage Wednesday had been involved in similar violence Monday when reporters and Kumar's supporters were beaten outside the court premises.
Delhi Police chief B.S. Bassi has said that the police were trying to identifying those involved in the violence but have made no arrests despite several newspapers naming the lawyers and publishing their photographs prominently.
India's sedition laws were drafted by its British colonial rulers to suppress the country's freedom struggle and in recent years the country's Supreme Court has said that those laws should be invoked only when there is actual evidence of incitement to violence.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Your comment here