No clean chit was given to anyone, including Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya, all of whom faced sedition charges, after the Delhi Police investigated the ruckus on the campus of the Jawaharlal Nehru University on February 9 last year. It is believed that slogans of 'azaadi' (freedom) were chanted on the university premises.
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In a charge sheet filed by the probing team, it was claimed that Khalid had posters printed to show solidarity with Afzal Guru, who was convicted in the 2001 parliament attack case and subsequently hanged. Khalid and Bhattacharya will be facing sedition charges. The panel cited around 40 video clips to prove that anti-India slogans were raised at the JNU event on that day which also marked the third death anniversary of Guru.
It is not the first time that Indians will be charged with sedition for expressing divergent opinions. Here's a list of five people who have been indicted for sedition in India:
1. Arundhati Roy, novelist and activist, was charged with sedition along with Hurriyat leader Syed Geelani and others for an anti-India speech at a seminar in 2010. They had taken part in an event called "Azadi-the Only Way" on October 21, 2010. Roy had said then that they should charge Jawaharlal Nehru posthumously and cited 14 instances where Nehru talked about "the question of accession in any disputed territory or state must be decided in accordance with wishes of people".
2. Assem Trivedi, anti-corruption cartoonist, was arrested on sedition charges in 2012. He had allegedly made derogatory sketches, depicting the National Emblem and the Parliament in a bad light. He was later released.
3. Kannada actress and former MP Ramya faced sedition charges in August 2016 after saying that Pakistan was not hell. The actor-turned-politician had said: "Pakistan is not hell. People there are just like us. They treated us very well." She had also refused to apologise for the comment.
4. Hardik Patel, the firebrand leader of the Patel agitation in Gujarat, had faced jail time after being charged with sedition for inciting crowds to attack policemen.
5. Binayak Sen, a doctor working in Chhattisgarh, was accused of sedition by the police for allegedly helping Naxalites. He was given bail due to lack of evidence.
