New Delhi: India opposition politicians and media called for a colonial-era sedition law to be scrapped on Wednesday, accusing authorities of trying to suppress dissent after it was invoked against students marking the execution of a Kashmiri militant.
Police used the 1870 law against 10 people for the 2016 rally at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University where police say anti-India posters were raised.
The students denied the allegations and critics said Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government was trying to curb free speech and pander to his Hindu nationalist base ahead of his re-election bid in a few months.
“There is no need for a sedition law in today’s times, it is a colonial law,” said Kapil Sibal, a senior leader of the main opposition Congress party.
“Many who merely speak or tweet against the government have sedition charges imposed against them; it is being misused by the centre just to keep citizens in check.”
Kanhaiya Kumar, the student leader, attended the rally questioning the execution of the Kashmiri separatist convicted of an attack on parliament in 2001, but his lawyers said he rejected the use of violence and made no incendiary comments.
Instead, his supporters said he criticised a right-wing student fraternity and a Hindu-nationalist umbrella group to which Modi’s ruling party belongs.
“The fact that the charges are being made three years after the alleged use of “anti-national slogans” by JNU students in February 2016, and on the eve of the general elections, suggests that their motive is political,” Manoj Joshi, a fellow at the New Delhi-based think tank Observer Research Foundation, wrote in Mail Today.
