Assam registers sedition case against CAA protest organiser Sharjeel Imam for 'dangerous statement'

Assam government registered a sedition case against Sharjeel Imam, one of the organisers of the anti-CAA protest at Shaheen Bagh in New Delhi, who allegedly said that main aim of the protesters was to cut Assam and rest of the Northeast from the country.

"This is a dangerous statement and keeping in mind the seriousness of it, we have decided to regiater a case against him," Assam minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said here, hours after Sharjeel's statement.

Additional director general of police (law and order) G P Singh told DH that the case (1/2020) was registered at the crime branch police station in Guwahati. Imam has been charged under section 121 A (criminal conspiracy) 124A (sedition), 153A (promoting enmity between groups on the basis of religion) and 153 B (imputation) and also under section 18 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, he said.

Sarma, who has often maintained that CAA would help Assam to fight the "design of demographic invasion by immigrant Muslims," claimed that Shaheen Bagh protest was infact a protest by Muslims against the Hindus, Christians, Jains, Buddhists...whom the governement is trying to give citizenship through the CAA.

"I think the CAB in the context of India, is our historical responsibility to give citizenship to Hindus, Christains, Sikhs, Buddhists and others, who had taken shelter in India due to harassment," Sarma told television channels.

Most parts of Assam and rest of the Northeast have been witnessing protests against CAA. The indigenous communities fear that CAA would reduce them into minorities by giving citizenship to large number of Hindu Bengali migrants from neighbouring Bangladesh. They want all post-1971 migrants be detected and deported, irrespective of religion.