Jawaharlal Nehru University student leader Umar Khalid was shot at outside the Constitution Club today, with eyewitnesses saying that one bullet was fired. Nobody was injured in the incident.
Khalid was at Constitution Club to speak at an event called ‘Freedom From Fear’, which was also going to be addressed by Radhika Vemula, family members of lynching victims,journalist Arfa Khanum Sherwani, Hapur lynching survivor Samaydin and others. A bullet was fired at him just as he was about to enter the Constitution Club premises.
Constitution Club is in central Delhi, an area that has been designated a high-security zone in the run-up to Independence Day.
“It’s ironic (the attack, given the nature of the event), but it’s not surprising,” Khalid told The Quint. “Just five minutes ago, there was an attempt to kill me. A person came with a gun, tried to overpower me, tried to shoot me down. Thankfully, my friends were there with me, who tried to overpower him in return. He ran away and he fired from across the road.”
“What has happened in the last two years is that there has been such a disinformation, hateful, propaganda campaign that has been spread by some media houses, by troll armies of the ruling party, where anyone who opposes the present government, who questions the present government, they are branded anti-nationals, they are branded all kinds of things, and then anything can be done to them. I was very scared in that moment when he pointed the gun at me. In that moment I was being reminded of what happened to Gauri Lankesh, and I thought that moment has arrived. I’m really thankful to my friends who were present there that they could overpower him and I survived.”
Khalid was one of the JNU students charged with sedition and arrested in February last year after an event on Afzal Guru. The government and police were widely criticised for slapping sedition charges on the students.
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