India’s highest court said Thursday it was concerned about law and order after a student leader whose arrest for sedition has sparked major protests was attacked, while journalists and lawyers were heckled in court.
The arrest of Kanhaiya Kumar last Friday over a rally at which anti-India slogans were chanted has provoked some of India’s biggest student protests in years amid concern over freedom of speech in the country’s universities.
Protest marches were due to be held in the capital and several other cities on Thursday to demand the release of Kumar, who was attacked on Wednesday by right-wing lawyers as police escorted him into court for a hearing.
Journalists covering the case had stones thrown at them and lawyers who had been sent by the Supreme Court to investigate were heckled, one of whom said there had been an “atmosphere of terror”.
On Thursday the Supreme Court said it was “concerned about the law and order situation arising out of the violence” at the Patiala House court, where violence also broke out an earlier hearing for Kumar on Monday.
The 32-year-old head of the student union at Delhi’s prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University has been remanded in custody until March 2.
He denies he was among those chanting anti-India slogans at a rally held last week to mark the 2013 hanging of Kashmiri separatist Mohammed Afzal Guru over a deadly 2001 attack on the Indian parliament.
