The Delhi Police on Tuesday arrested Sharjeel Imam, a research scholar of Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) who was booked for sedition after his alleged “inflammatory and instigating” speech during a protest against Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC).
Sharjeel Imam was arrested from Jehanabad in Bihar days after he managed to outwit the Delhi Police which had launched a massive manhunt to nab him.
He is also wanted in other states, including Assam, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh.
Sharjeel was slapped with a sedition case by the Crime Branch of the Delhi Police after his alleged speeches went viral on the social media wherein he was heard speaking about Assam’s possible secession from the country in the wake of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA).
In a video that went viral on January 25, Sharjeel Imam is seen talking about splitting the northeast from India to block the implementation of the National Register of Citizens (NRC). “We know how Muslims are being treated in Assam. We have to save people from the NRC. The only way to do this is by cutting off northeast from India.”
A graduate in computer science from IIT-Mumbai, Sharjeel Imam had shifted to Delhi for pursuing research at the Centre for Historical Studies, JNU.
Earlier today, Bihar’s Jehanabad police had detained Sharjeel’s brother for questioning. His brother was picked during a raid at his ancestral home in Bihar.
On Sunday, Jehanabad police had conducted raids at the ancestral home of the self-proclaimed JNU student leader, in a bid to trace Sharjeel and arrest him.
Earlier, he had been charged on similar charges at a police station in Aligarh for a speech he delivered on the AMU campus. Besides, a case under the stringent anti-terror law UAPA has been registered against him in Assam.
While the Delhi Police conducted raids in the national capital and nearby areas, the Uttar Pradesh Police and the Assam Police have been searching for him for some time in connection with the provocative statement in the national capital’s Shaheen Bagh area on January 13, which went viral on Saturday.
Earlier on Monday, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had questioned Union Home Minister Amit Shah over Sharjeel Imam moving free even two days after he said Assam should be separated from the country.