Twitter erupted in solidarity a day after 14 students of Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) were booked under sedition and eight other charges after separate incidents of scuffle broke out in the campus on Tuesday, 12 February.
An FIR was filed by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s district head, Mukesh Lodhi, who claimed there were “Pakistan Zindabad” slogans being raised by the accused students after an altercation with Republic TV journalists on Tuesday morning.
Politicians React to the Incident
Condemning the incident, BSP supremo Mayawati wrote on Twitter that it was an example of state terror.
Politician and activist Jignesh Mevani condemned what he called the ‘dadagiri’ of ‘sanghi students and media’, saying that they were ruining people’s lives.
Former CM of Jammu and Kashmir Mehbooba Mufti called it “ridiculous” to have slapped sedition laws for the incident.
Congress spokersperson Sanjay Jha questioned why TV channels were not questioning the sedition case in primetime TV debates, asking who was standing up for the students.
Congress politician Salman Nizami warned PM Modi that the sedition charge would crush him badly in the 2019 elections.
Activists Condemn the Incident
Activist Shehla Rashid also took to Twitter to express her solidarity with the students of AMU, calling for the government to stop fighting students and instead fight their equals.
Activist and former student leader Umar Khalid also tweeted, noting that AMU was being attacked again. “The last time they came for AMU when there were calls of Jinnah, people gave them a beating in the Kairana bypolls over sugarcane. They didn’t learn their lesson then and they’ve still come back for AMU. Now all of UP will be cleaned.”
Kanhaiya Kumar also joined in, slamming the incident, calling it a shameful reaction to a king not liking opposition to his court journalist.
Activist and editor Kavita Krishnan called the incident appalling yet unsurprising. She also noted that the incident seemed to be a repetition of the ZeeNews and JNU incident.
Journalists Slam Sedition Case
Senior journalist Barkha Dutt slammed the sedition case, calling it “farcical” and “awful”. Journalist Shekhar Gupta also slammed the move, questioning the intention behind it.
Journalist Sagarika Ghose also questioned the move, demanding that the sedition charge be dropped.
Sedition Charge Angers Others As Well
Shah Faesal, a former civil servant from Jammu and Kashmir, called the reaction “grossly disproportionate to the nature of offence” – reportedly an altercation with a TV crew.
He called it a clear case of bias towards students with a particular background and called for people to stand up for them and get the FIR quashed.
Actress Swara Bhasker also tweeted her reaction to the incident, pointing out that students seemed to have become a target since 2014.
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