The Indian government has incarcerated the leader of a students’ union under suicide watch in jail number 3, the same as Mohammed Afzal Guru, a Kashmiri separatist who was executed three years ago on charges of sedition.
Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union leader Kanhaiya Kumar was arrested last week for allegedly shouting anti-India slogans at a rally in protest against Guru’s execution.
A 12-member quick-reaction team has been deployed around the cell to keep a 24-hour watch on Kumar, who will spend 14 days in isolation in the Tihar Jail, India’s largest complex of prisons.
“50 policemen surrounded Kumar as he was brought to jail around 8:15pm after which he was registered as an inmate and underwent a medical test,” The Times of India quoted sources as saying.
Kumar will be kept in ward number 4 to ensure proximity to hospital in the event of an emergency. “One of the cells close to the jail entrance has been vacated and reserved for him. He will be kept under multi-layered security and only Delhi Prison officials or staff will be allowed near his cell. His food will be checked as a precautionary measure,” an official said.
The students’ union head of New Delhi’s prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University had been remanded in custody on Monday at a hearing marked by violent scuffles outside the court where fellow students and journalists had gathered to witness his appearance.
His arrest has fed into a row over freedom of expression in India, where some rights campaigners say the Hindu nationalist government is using the British-era sedition law to clamp down on dissent. Sedition carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment in India.
Kumar denies he was among those chanting anti-India slogans at last Tuesday’s rally to mark the 2013 hanging of Guru over a deadly 2001 attack on the Indian parliament.
Protests against Guru’s execution have regularly been held in Kashmir, where many believe he was not given a fair trial. Guru has always denied plotting the attack, which was carried out by Kashmiri militants.
The charge has been used in the past against supporters of independence for the disputed territory of Kashmir, which is divided between India and Pakistan and claimed in full by both.
Indian forces have since 1989 been fighting militant groups seeking independence for Kashmir or a merger with Pakistan. Many Kashmiris associate more with Pakistan, a Muslim-majority Islamic republic, than with Hindu-majority India which is officially secular.
