JNU student Umar Khalid firing case: Attackers sent to two-day police custody

New Delhi, Aug 21: A Delhi court on Tuesday sent two persons, who had allegedly attacked JNU student leader Umar Khalid in front of the Constitution Club here, to two-day police custody.

The two men, Darvesh Shahpur and Naveen Dalal, had claimed to have attacked the Jawaharlal Nehru University student outside the Constitution Club before an event.

In a video circulated on messaging service WhatsApp after the incident, the men had claimed: "By attacking Khalid we wanted to give a gift to the people on the occasion of Independence Day." They also said in the video that they would surrender on August 17 at the house of Sikh revolutionary Kartar Singh Sarabha. A police team went there but they did not turn up. They were later arrested, and investigators are trying to verify their claims.

In 2014, Naveen Dalal was arrested for allegedly entering the BJP office with a cow head, the police said.

The Delhi Police had handed over the case to its Special Cell, which incidentally is already probing a sedition case against Khalid and two other JNU students.

The police are interrogating the two men on their whereabouts on the day of the incident and trying to obtain CCTV footage from nearby places.

The police suspect that the accused uploaded the video "for publicity", which, perhaps, was their "primary motive".