Court grants two months to police to get sanction to prosecute Kanhaiya

Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Purushottam Pathak granted two more months to the Delhi Police to get the requisite sanctions to prosecute former JNU Students' Union president Kanhaiya Kumar and others in a sedition case. On 9 February 2016, some students of JNU had held a protest on their campus against the capital punishment meted out to the 2001 Indian Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru and Kashmiri separatist Maqbool Bhat.

New Delhi: A court here granted two more months to the Delhi Police on Wednesday to get the requisite sanctions to prosecute former JNU Students' Union president Kanhaiya Kumar and others in a sedition case.

Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Purushottam Pathak directed the police to get the requisite nod by February 19, the next date of hearing.

The court passed the directions after the police submitted that it was yet to receive the sanctions as the file was pending with the Delhi government's home department.

On January 14, the police had filed a charge sheet in the court against Kumar and others, including former Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) students Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya, saying they were leading a procession and supported the seditious slogans raised on the campus during an event on February 9, 2016.

The court had earlier directed the police to ask the authorities concerned to expedite the process while granting it three weeks to secure the sanction needed to prosecute Kumar and the other accused in the case.