After witnessing ‘violence’ for two days at the Patiala House Courts complex, the Delhi Police on Thursday played safe and took former Delhi University lecturer SAR Geelani to Chanakyapuri police station for his remand proceedings where a magistrate remanded him to 14-day judicial custody till March 3.
He has been lodged in the high security ward of the Jail number 1 of Tihar where he was kept earlier after his arrest in connection with the 2001 Parliament attack case before his acquittal.
The former lecturer, who was arrested in connection with an event at the Press Club of India where anti-national slogans were allegedly raised last week, also moved a bail application through his counsel Satish Tamta which will come up for hearing on Friday in the court of Metropolitan Magistrate Harvinder Singh.
Police had lodged a case under sections 124A (sedition), 120B(criminal conspiracy) and 149 (unlawful assembly) of the IPC against Geelani and other unnamed persons.
Earlier in the day, not wanting to take any risk, police approached the magistrate and requested that the remand proceedings be held in a police station. A magistrate then went to Chanakyapuri Police Station, about 7 kilometres from Patiala House Court, for the hearing when police said Geelani was not required for any further custodial interrogation so he be remanded to judicial custody.
Geelani’s arrest has come amid the raging row over the arrest of Kanhaiya over sedition charges in connection with an event on the JNU campus on February 9 against the hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru.
Geelani was convicted in connection with the 2001 Parliament attack case but was acquitted for “need of evidence” by the Delhi High Court in October 2003, a decision upheld by the Supreme Court in August 2005.
Police had claimed to have registered the FIR taking suo motu cognisance of media clips of the incident. Following registration of the FIR, police questioned for two consecutive days Delhi University professor Ali Javed, a Press Club member who had booked the hall for the event.