February 15, 2019:
On Thursday, the Uttar Pradesh Police said the sedition charges against 14 students of Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) will be dropped since 'no evidence was found to substantiate it'.
The charge was levied on Feb 12 after a clash following a confrontation with a crew of Republic TV.
An FIR was filed Tuesday based on a complaint by a BJP Yuva Morcha leader Mukesh Lodhi who said the 'hundreds' of AMU students surrounded his vehicle, assaulted him and fired at him.
The complaint also accused the students of shouting pro-Pakistan and anti-India slogans.
The university's students' union denied the charges saying the FIR is 'false and fabricated'.
Ashutosh Dwivedi, the superintendent of police (Aligarh city), told Scroll.in that sedition charge was added to the FIR due to the nature of allegations.
However, 'After preliminary inquiry, no evidence was found to substantiate it,' and so the sedition charge 'shall be dropped.'
The development has come after the police looked into video evidence of the incident where no such chanting of slogans can be seen.
'We are not so much casual that we will sustain such charges against students if there is no evidence. We will absolutely drop it. But we need to be confirmed that there is no evidence to back this charge,' Aligarh's Senior Police Officer Akash Kulhari told NDTV.
He said that while there was no 'prime evidence regarding sedition in this case,' the police has identified 17 people - including 5 outsiders - who were 'involved in violence that took place on the campus.'
'We have forwarded their names to the AMU administration, along with a list of 15 complaints sent by the complainants,' Kulhari further told Indian Express as saying.
The complaints will be joined together as a single FIR once the university conducts an internal probe.
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