The Delhi Police booked former Delhi University lecturer SAR Geelani for sedition in connection with an event at Press Club of India in which a group shouted slogans hailing Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru.
DCP (New Delhi) Jatin Narwal said an FIR has been registered against Geelani and other unnamed persons under Sections 124A (sedition), 120B (criminal conspiracy) and 149 (unlawful assembly) of IPC in connection with the event at the Press Club in which anti-India sloganeering took place.
The action against Geelani, who was acquitted in the Parliament attack case, comes even as the Delhi Police had registered a case of sedition in connection with Tuesday event at JNU campus against the hanging of Afzal Guru following complaints by BJP MP Maheish Giri and ABVP.
Police on Friday claimed to have registered the sedition case against Geelani and others after taking suo motu cognisance of media clips of the incident. “By the time we registered the case, we had received no complaints from any party,” Narwal said. Police also claimed that Geelani was booked as he is presumed to be the main organiser of the event.
“Request for booking a hall at press club was done through Geelani’s e-mail and the nature of the event was proposed to be a public meeting,” Narwal said.
“We are monitoring video footage and trying to ascertain the identity of the ones involved in anti-India sloganeering. We shall question several individuals who were present at the event,” a senior official said.
Press Club of India issued a show-cause notice on Thursday to the member who had booked the conference hall for the event on Wednesday.
“At the outset, we strongly condemn the incident that happened on Press Club premises by miscreants. We have taken strong action against the member under whose signature the conference hall was hired. A show-cause notice has been served and further action will follow,” Secretary General of the Press Club, Nadeem Ahmad Kazmi, had said.
When contacted, Professor Ali Javed of Delhi University, the member of the club who had booked the premises for the presser, distanced himself from the event, saying he does not approve of the sloganeering and he was not one of the organisers.
“I was given the impression that Prof SAR Geelani wished to conduct a memorial meeting on behalf of Committee for Release of Political Prisoners, a well known registered body, to discuss the system of justice. I agreed to book the venue in good faith in the light of the cause… I had no idea that some members of the audience would try to use the meeting for political sloganeering,” he said.
Geelani was acquitted by the Delhi High Court in October 2003, a decision upheld by the Supreme Court in August 2005 which at the same time observed that the needle of suspicion pointed towards him.