JNU row: Five absconding students back on campus

Five JNU students, including Umar Khalid, who the police have been looking for in connection with a sedition case, today surfaced on campus, saying they did not do anything wrong but were "framed" using "doctored video"

New Delhi: Five JNU students, including Umar Khalid, who the police have been looking for in connection with a sedition case, today surfaced on campus, saying they did not do anything wrong but were "framed" using "doctored video".

Students paste posters on the JNU campus. Pic/ PTI

While police rushed a team to the campus on receiving information about them, the students maintained that "they will not surrender but police can come and arrest them".

The five students Umar Khalid, Anirban Bhattacharya, Rama Naga, Ashutosh Kumar and Anant Prakash had gone missing from the campus since February 12 after JNU students union president Kanhaiya Kumar was arrested in a sedition case lodged in connection with an event held on the campus against the hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru where anti-naitonal slogans were allegedly raised.

According to Ashutosh, former president of JNU students union and a PhD scholar at varsity's School of International studies, they "have come back with a view of supporting the enquiry. The massive support we got from students and others from across the globe gave us the strength to return. I, Rama, Anirban and Anant were around but did not come in public due to atmosphere of mob lynching."

He, however, maintained that the four of them were not in touch with Umar Khalid and had spoken to him last on February 9, the day of the event.

Ashutosh said the students were in Delhi itself and that the decision to return on Sunday evening had been taken individually and not collectively.

"We didn't do anything wrong but were being framed using doctored video. We will not go anywhere now and will be part of the movement against the branding of university as anti-national," he said.

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