HC to hear Kanhaiya bail plea today

The Delhi high court will hear on Tuesday the bail plea of JNU student leader Kanhaiya Kumar, with the focus likely on an allegedly doctored video clip used by Delhi police to arrest him on charges of sedition.

Kanhaiya moved the HC for bail – listed for hearing before a bench of justice Pratibha Rani – after the Supreme Court refused to entertain a similar plea. HC sources said entry to the courtroom will be restricted to lawyers involved in the case, family members and media persons.

Kanhaiya was arrested on February 12 for allegedly shouting anti-India slogans during a rally in the university campus commemorating the anniversary of the execution of 2001 Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru. Five other JNU students, also accused of sedition, returned to the campus on Sunday night but are yet to be arrested.

Police had filed an FIR based on a video clip from the event and aired by some TV channels though doubts have emerged about its authenticity.

A Zee News journalist, Vishwa Deepak, resigned last week from the channel suggesting that it deliberately misinterpreted the video clip to brand some students including Kumar as anti-nationals.



Deepak said his decision was in “protest against the role we (Zee News) played in kindling and then promoting a campaign of blind nationalism which used the JNUSU President Kanhaiya Kumar as an excuse”.

“The video didn’t have any ‘Pakistan Zindabad’ slogans at all -– yet we played it repeatedly to spread madness and mayhem. How did we believe that some voices coming out of the dark belonged to Kanhaiya and his companions? Due to our biases, we heard ‘long live Indian courts’ as ‘long live Pakistan’ and working on the government line, brought the careers, their hopes and aspirations and families of some people to the brink of destruction,” Deepak wrote in his resignation letter.

In his bail plea, Kanhaiya has said he was wrongly arrested on the basis of an FIR which was devoid of evidence to book him under such a serious charge.

His counsel said the petition is limited to bail for Kanhaiya who was arrested on February 12 and later sent to judicial custody till March 2. The Supreme Court had last week refused to entertain his bail plea saying approaching it directly would set a dangerous precedent and asked him to move the HC.