Jamia violence: Cops recover Sharjeel’s phone, laptop

On the second day of Sharjeel Imam’s police custody, the Delhi Police recovered his laptop, mobile phone and a desktop from his rented house in south Delhi’s Vasant Kunj.

Apart from those items, police claimed to have found “misleading pamphlets” with misinformation about Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and National Register for Citizens (NRC), copies of which were allegedly distributed in Delhi’s mosques. The pamphlets were photocopied at a printing shop near Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), the police said.

Sharjeel’s mother, Agsan Rahim, denied the allegations. She said that Sharjeel’s speech was misconstrued and taken out of context, and that her son is innocent.

Sharjeel, a JNU scholar, was booked on the charges of sedition and related sections for allegedly making an inflammatory speech at an anti-CAA protest on December 13, 2019 — two days before a violent clash broke out between police and protesters. He was arrested on Tuesday afternoon from his village in Bihar’s Jehanabad by a team of Delhi and Bihar police, and was remanded to five-day police custody by a Delhi court on Wednesday.

Deputy commissioner of police (crime), Rajesh Deo, said they recovered a laptop and desktop that belong to Sharjeel from his rented flat in Vasant Kunj on Friday. “His mobile phone was recovered from his house at Kako in Jehanabad, Bihar, on his brother’s instance. The pamphlets we found had misleading and intimidating facts about the CAA and NRC. The pamphlets were distributed in various mosques,” Deo said.

The DCP said they have also identified the shop from where pamphlets were printed and photocopied.

Sharjeel was wanted by the police in Delhi, besides five other states, after a video, in which he allegedly talks about blocking the North-East from the rest of India for at least a month and isolating Assam, has been widely circulated on social media. Hindustan Times could not independently verify the authenticity of the video.

The Delhi Police also claimed on Friday that they arrested one of the 69 suspects, whose photographs they had released three days ago, claiming that all of them were involved in violence and rioting at Jamia and New Friends Colony on December 15, 2019.

Another person from the photograph was arrested earlier by the police. The investigators are on the lookout for the 67 others, senior officers said.

The images were pulled out from the CCTV footage and videos recorded by the police during the violence and ensuing vandalism, senior officers said, appealing to the public to share the identities of the suspects.

The images (mug shots) were released by the crime branch’s special investigation team, which is probing the violence. With Friday’s arrest, the total arrests pertaining to the clashes on the Jamia Millia Islamia campus last December 15 has gone up to 19.