Anti-CAA stir: Sharjeel Imam arrested on sedition charges for inflammatory speeches at AMU

Jehanabad, Jan 28: The Delhi Police's Crime Branch on Tuesday arrested JNU student Sharjeel Imam, he has been booked in a sedition case, from Jehanabad area in Bihar, officials here said. Earlier, in the day a brother of Sharjeel was also picked up by police in fresh attempts to trace the anti-CAA activist, who has been slapped with sedition cases lodged across several states for his alleged "inflammatory" speeches.

"We have arrested Sharjeel Imam from Jehanabad," said Rajesh Deo, deputy commissioner of police, Crime Branch. The force had deployed five teams to locate Imam, a resident of Bihar. Raids were conducted in Mumbai, Patna and Delhi.

The PhD student at the Jawaharlal Nehru University's Centre for Historical Studies has been booked in sedition cases lodged across several states for alleged "inflammatory" speeches made during protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act.

Police officials were tight-lipped about the issue and Superintendent of Police, Jehanabad, Manish Kumar said, when approached with queries.

However, residents of Malik Tola locality in Kako police station area of the district, where Imams ancestral house is situated, claimed that a heavy police contingent had raided the premises at about 4 am from where they took into custody Muzammil Imam younger brother of the JNU research scholar and another person, who have been taken to an undisclosed destination for questioning.

The police had raided Imam's ancestral home on Sunday night after "help was sought by central agencies".

Said to be in his early 30s, Sharjeel Imam has a degree from IIT Mumbai and later moved to Delhi for pursuing research at JNUs Centre for Historical Studies. He had been involved in organizing the protests at Shaheen Bagh but came into limelight after a video clip went viral wherein he could be heard making some disturbing comments while addressing a gathering at Aligarh Muslim University, following which he was booked under sedition charge in the UP town.

The Delhi police claimed he had given an "inflammatory" speech earlier on the Jamia Milia Islamia campus and lodged an FIR against him in the national capital.

Besides, another case was lodged under the stringent anti-terror law against him in Assam, taking cognisance of Imams remark that Assam could be "severed from India, even if for a few months" as a result of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA)._ Police in Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh had also lodged FIRs against the JNU scholar, over his speech in which he threatened to "cut off" Assam and the northeast from the rest of the country.

His mother had appeared before the media and claimed that her son was "not a law-breaker and would surrender to the investigating agencies" and that he had been in favour of "calling off" the agitation at Shaheen Bagh, which has been in news for 24X7 protest, mostly by women.