The charges against JNU PhD scholar Umar Khalid are shrouded in a lot of "fabrications and lies" and the episode has "taken away" all sense of normalcy and sanity from the lives of his family members, his sister said on Friday calling him a "true son" of India.
United States-based PhD student Maryam Fatima also hit out at a section of the media for running a "trial" against Umar, the alleged organiser of an event against Afzal Guru's execution at the JNU, saying it is creating a "lynch mob" climate.
Umar, a former member of ultra-Left students outfit Democratic Students Union, has been missing since the JNU row broke out and police is on the look out for him.
"Most channels have been conducting media trials based on false information. They first claimed there was an Intelligence Bureau report linking Umar to Jaish-e-Muhammad. This was denied by the IB.
But the story is still doing the rounds. All of this is adding up to a lynch mob climate," Fatima told PTI over email. Umar, who is working on his PhD on tribal rights and colonial forest policy, has placed his concern for the dispossessed over his own life and career -- turning down opportunities to go abroad, she claimed.
She said he has been actively campaigning for the rights of the marginalised and alleged that anti-India slogans at the controversial event at the JNU were raised by the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad activists.
"The issue of sloganeering is shrouded in a lot of fabrications and lies. Several of the videos were doctored," she alleged. "It is ridiculous to ask us if we think it (anti-India slogans) is okay - of course, not. But you have to dig deeper and see who was raising them. He is a true son of India," she said.
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