In a major turn of events, the Delhi police is said to have no evidence against former DU professor S.A.R. Geelani, who was recently arrested on sedition charges for allegedly organising and participating in an event where anti-India slogans were allegedly raised in the Press Club of India here.
A highly-placed source said that so far the police only has one video clip of the PCI event in which there was nothing to indicate that Mr Geelani had raised any slogans. Since the police is left with no direct evidence against Mr Geelani, the investigators are reportedly in the process of making some club employees and a few others as their witnesses in the sedition case. The source also said that pressure was mounting on the police to collect evidence against Mr Geelani.
“Apart from sedition, we have booked (Mr) Geelani under Section 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of IPC, and to prove our case against him we need to arrest other people as well. A few names have cropped up in our investigation, but we have no idea about their whereabouts,” the source said.
The case is giving the police a tough time as it tries to persuade some people to become prosecution witnesses, the source said, adding that these people were reluctant to become prosecution witnesses. “Now, our case will be mostly dependent on testimonies of the prosecution witnesses. Efforts are also being made to get more videos that could be used as evidence,” the source said, adding, “We are already conducting raids to nab Umar, Muddassar, and Tripti who had actively participated in the PCI programme.”
The police is said to have recorded statements of a few witnesses. “But to prove that anti-national slogans were raised at the PCI event we have to apprehend Umar, Muddassar, Tripti and few unknown people,” the source said.
The police is also trying to establish whether Mohammad Umar and Democratic Students’ Union member Umar Khalid, who it is seeking in connection with the JNU controversy, is the same person. The police probe has so far revealed that Mr Muddassar and Mr Khalid had a meeting with Mr Geelani and decided to organise the event. Mr Geelani then met Delhi University professor Ali Javed and had asked him to book the club for the event. Tripti had allegedly designed the posters that were displayed at the event. The police is also trying to work out whether the JNU and PCI events were linked.
