LUCKNOW: Former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti on Monday demanded that the sedition cases filed against three students of Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) for allegedly trying to hold a prayer meeting for scholar-turned-militant Mannan Wani — killed in an encounter last week — be withdrawn. “It will be a travesty to punish them (students) for remembering their former colleague (Wani) who was a victim of relentless violence in Kashmir,” Mehbooba said in a tweet.
“Pushing youth to the wall will be counter productive. Centre must intervene in withdrawing cases against students & AMU authorities must revoke their suspension,” she said in another tweet.
Twenty-seven-year-old Wani, who was pursuing a Ph.D course in allied geology at AMU, had quit the university and joined militant ranks in January. The Aligarh police had booked two students — Waseem Ayub Malik and Abdul Hafeez Mir — along with several unidentified students under sedition charges on Wednesday for alleged sloganeering and anti-national activities by a group assembled at the Kennedy Hall in the campus to allegedly offer prayers for Wani. The administration had then issued show cause notices to nice other students and suspended Malik and Mir.
Around 1,200 students from J&K, in a letter presented to the vice-chancellor on Saturday, demanded that the sedition cases against the two students be dropped and show-cause notices issued to nine other students from that assembly be withdrawn or they would quit their courses.“We, will surrender our degrees and leave the campus for our homes for reasons of our safety and security. University and district administration will be responsible for any such eventuality,” the letter, signed by over 1,200 students, stated.