Besides giving clean chit to JNU Students’ Union president Kanhaiya Kumar, the Delhi Government appointed magisterial enquiry headed by District Magistrate (New Delhi) Sanjay Kumar wanted to question Umar Khalid, Ashutosh and Anirban Bhattacharya after they resurfaced. But the trio did not turn up for recording of their statements and sent a “Thank You” message along with their unwillingness to share anything.
This was revealed in the 113-page magisterial enquiry report of the Delhi Government on Thursday.
The fact finding report prepared by the AAP Government — which does not have any legal sanctity and did not find anything adverse against Kanhaiya — has many loopholes as the enquiry committee failed to take the statement of the students as well as prepared report based on seven videos collected from YouTube and Twitter rather than taking raw footage from the probing agency: The Delhi Police.
But the report also stated that anti-national activities took place on JNU campus. Kumar in his report clearly stated, “I also tried to interact with the students, who at a later date appeared in JNU after initial disappearance. But they conveyed “Thanks You” messages along with their unwillingness to share anything,” Kumar said.
According to report, Umar was visible in many videos and that his support for Kashmir and Afzal Guru was known. He was the organiser of the event and his role should be further investigated.
The probe panel did not find any evidence against Kanhaiya raising anti-India slogans at a controversial February 9 event, allegations based on which he was slapped with sedition charges by police. The report said he was part of the large gathering.
The enquiry report said anti-national slogans were shouted on the campus and JNU administration has already identified a “few faces” who were “clearly” heard raising them.
The probe panel said their whereabouts must be found out and their role must be investigated. The enquiry report has not authenticated Zee News video footage as the channel maintained an ambivalent stand on sharing the footage.
The enquiry report further stated the probe panel wanted to interrogate Khalid, Anirban and Ashutosh after they resurfaced by they didn’t come before the District Magistrate and sent a ‘Thank you note’ .
The biggest flaw of the report was the methodology of the officer. “I examined the various footages available on YouTube, a few claiming to be original and others were clipping from various news channels.”
“I also read several articles/options/statements online and offline. I also asked the reporters who interacted with me to share the links of raw footages or original. It was decided to get a total seven videos examined at the earliest. I collected several videos shot by the security staff of G4S or other JNU officials by their cameras,” the officer said while giving the detailed methodology adopted by him in the report.
Going contrary to the methodology, he selected six videos from YouTube and one from Twitter.
It said seven videos of the event were sent to a Hyderabad-based forensic lab and out of them and three were found to be doctored, including one clipping of a news channel from YouTube.
“I want to write specifically about two videos. One was uploaded on YouTube as original video and another was video clip of the news channel. “First I want to mention about the video available on YouTube titled as very shocking and disturbing video from JNU. This video has been very finely edited. As per the report available, the Bandook” could have been inserted into the recording at around five minutes eight seconds 327 milliseconds. There were other serious editing but this was important to highlight”.
“I also tried to get the video footage examined where “Pakistan zindabad” was supposed to be heard or only Azadi was said by Kanhaiya. I have seen one news channel exposed some editing in such videos. I have picked up a 38 second clip. This is possibly from news clipping of one TV news channel and could possibly be shown by others. This was found to be having sound and video coming from two different sources. Hence it was a doctored video with possibly intention to misguide public,” Kumar said in the report.