Srinagar, March 03, 2020 (PPI-OT): An Indian court extended judicial custody of the three Kashmiri students charged with sedition for allegedly raising pro-Pakistan slogans, by another five days. The Karnataka’s Hubali court sent Basit Ashiq Sofi (19), Talib Majid (19) and Amir Mohiuddin (23), to judicial custody till March 7, Advocate B.T. Venkatesh pleading case of the illegally detained Kashmiri students told over phone to media men in Srinagar.
Venkatesh said the bail application was moved on Friday last and on March 2, the session court heard the bail plea. The court, he said gave the prosecution two day for filing the objections. On February 14, the three engineering students from KLE Institute of Technology in Hubali were arrested and charged with sedition after a video of them shouting Pakistan Zindabad went viral.
A day later, the Hindu BJP-RSS dominated Hubali Bar Association passed a resolution and barred its members from representing the three Kashmiri students. Twenty-four lawyers from Bengaluru including BT Venkatesh filed a petition with the Karnataka High Court against the Hubali Bar Association’s resolution.
The High Court had reprimanded the bar association and reminded them that every accused is entitled to a fair trial. According to police officials, the selfie video of the three had gone viral as they posted it on WhatsApp. In the viral video, they allegedly were heard chanting “Azadi” and “Pakistan Zindabad”.
Meanwhile, India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA) has arrested a father-daughter duo in Pulwama district. The NIA sleuths accompanied by Indian police and CRPF carried out the raid in a residential house at Hakripora village and arrested the house owner Tariq Ahmad and his daughter and took them to concerned police station. After being quizzed in police station for some time, the father-daughter duo was later handed over to NIA for further questioning, media reports said.
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