NEW DELHI // Two Indian university students were detained on Wednesday and face sedition charges after they surrendered following protests in New Delhi where they allegedly shouted anti-India slogans.
After avoiding arrest for more than a week, the two came out of Jawaharlal Nehru University campus on Tuesday night with some students forming a chain around them and gave themselves up to the police.
Rajan Bhagat, New Delhi police spokesman, said the two were questioned and arrested on Wednesday. The students have denied the charges.
Police are still looking for three other students from the prestigious university who have been missing for more than a week and presumed to be in hiding.
Kanhaiya Kumar, president of the university’s student union, was arrested earlier over his participation in events on February 9 when they allegedly used anti-India slogans to call for the destruction of India and independence for the Indian portion of Kashmir.
Thousands of protesters from New Delhi’s two main universities marched near parliament on Tuesday, demanding Kumar’s immediate release and accusing supporters of the ruling Hindu nationalist party of creating political turmoil in the universities by levelling the anti-India charges.
In Srinagar on Tuesday, Kashmir university students demanded the release of Delhi University lecturer, SAR Geelani, who was arrested last week on sedition charges for organising a separate event in Indian capital earlier this month where they allegedly criticised the hanging in 2013 of a Kashmiri separatist convicted of attacking the parliament.
* Associated Press
