The Indian police registered 112 cases of sedition across the country between 2014 and 2016, but only two have led to convictions, according to a report released by the National Crime Records Bureau on Thursday and a government statement in Parliament last year.
The National Crime Records Bureau’s annual Crime in India report, the country’s only official record of crimes, showed that 35 cases of sedition were registered in 2016. Haryana topped the list with 12 cases, most of them were linked to the agitation by Jats in that state in February 2016 for reservations in educational institutions and government jobs.
Delhi accounted for two cases. The first relates to the February 9, 2016, incident in Jawaharlal Nehru University, which led to the arrest of student union leader Kanhaiya Kumar and two others in connection with an event commemorating the death anniversary of 2001 Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru. The second case pertained to a meeting at the Press Club of India in Delhi on the following day, February 10, at which anti-Indian slogans were allegedly chanted. The event’s convenor, Delhi University professor SAR Gilani, was charged with sedition.