Sharjeel Imam, JNU Student Accused Of Sedition, Arrested In Bihar

New Delhi/ Patna:

Sharjeel Imam, the research scholar of Delhi’s prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University accused of sedition, has been arrested from his hometown – Bihar’s Jehenabad. A spate of police cases were registered against him after a video of him allegedly making anti-national comments was widely circulated online.

A sedition case was registered against Sharjeel Imam in Delhi for his alleged call to sever the whole of the northeast from the rest of India. He is also wanted in other states, including Assam, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh.

By last evening, the hunt for him had spread to Mumbai, Patna and Delhi as the Delhi Police pushed in five teams from its Crime Branch.

The Delhi police claimed he made divisive speeches on two occasions, once at the Jamia Millia Islamia University at the height of the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protests in December, the other at the Aligarh Muslim University in Uttar Pradesh, another epicentre of the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act or CAA.

Sharjeel Imam is allegedly one of the organisers of the protest at Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh protest.  But the protesters at Shaheen Bagh distanced themselves from his comments, saying that “no single person” can be called the organiser.

The Citizenship Amendment Act makes religion, for the first time, the test of Indian citizenship. The government says it will help non-Muslim refugees from three Muslim-dominated neighbouring countries if they fled to India because of religious persecution. Critics say the bill discriminates against Muslims and violates secular tenets of the Constitution.