The Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union (JNUSU) has come out in support of Sharjeel Imam who had made calls for North East India to be cut off from the rest of the country. The Union has condemned his arrest and labelled it a case of ‘Islamophobia’. It claimed that the BJP wants to ‘criminalize’ Muslims.
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In a statement, the JNUSU said, “Arrest of JNU student Sharjeel Imam under draconian charges of sedition shows that Islamophobia, selective amnesia and bias matter more than anything for a state apparatus under control of RSS-BJP. BJP and RSS want to criminalise Muslims on an unprecedented scale.”
Radical Islamists took to Twitter to trend ‘ReleaseSharjeelImam’ after he was arrested by Delhi Police over his seditious speech. JNUSU Councillor Afreen Fatima claimed that Imam had ‘surrendered’ to Delhi Police in ‘good faith’. Ladeeda Sakhaloon and Aysha Renna, Barkha Dutt’s ‘Sheroes’ who are known to have Radical Islamic opinions, had also called for his release.
Sharjeel Imam, the Shaheen Bagh mastermind and columnist with The Wire, was arrested from his ancestral home in Bihar by Delhi Police earlier in the day. Delhi Police had filed an FIR on Sunday against Imam, who is also a columnist with leftist propaganda website The Wire, under IPC section 153 for giving provocative statements with intent to cause riots. Earlier, Assam Police had registered a case under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act against Sharjeel Imam. The UP police were also hunting for Imam for a speech made in Aligarh Muslim Univerisity.