Mumbai police launch hunt on group of people raising po-Sharjeel slogans at LGBTQ march

New Delhi, Feb 03: The Police has launched a hunt for a group of people who raised slogans in favour of arrested Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student Sharjeel Imam at an LGBTQ parade in Mumbai on Saturday.

The controversial video which went viral on social media, shows a group of people raising the slogan of 'Sharjeel tere sapno ko manzil tak pahunchayenge' (We will make your dreams come true, Sharjeel) at the march-called the Mumbai Pride Solidarity Gathering 2020-which was organised at the Azad Maidan.

Reacting to the controversy on Sunday, the Queer Azadi Mumbai (QAM), the organisers of the march, distanced themselves from the slogan, saying that these were raised by people not known to them.

Calling the slogan 'irresponsible and potentially detrimental,' the QAM added that it will cooperate with the legal processes that may be required by law enforcement systems in this regard.

Earlier, Sharjeel's mobile phone and laptop along with some anti-CAA posters have been seized from his house in Bihar''s Jehanabad and rented flat in Vasant Kunj.

Imam was arrested by the Delhi Police''s Crime Branch from Jehanabad in a sedition case and he is being questioned by police for his alleged inflammatory speeches in Aligarh and at the Jamia Millia Islamia University.

Sharjeel, a former IIT-Bombay alumnus, the PhD scholar at the Jawaharlal Nehru University's Centre for Historical Studies has been booked for sedition and other charges in several states after videos of his alleged inflammatory speeches, made during protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), were circulated on the social media.

An FIR was registered against Imam by the Delhi Police on January 25 under IPC sections 124A (sedition) and 153A (promoting or attempting to promote disharmony or feelings of enmity on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, caste or community or any other ground whatsoever) among others.