Bihar: JNU student Sharjeel Imam evades arrest, house raided

PATNA: A joint team of Delhi, UP and Bihar police conducted raids on the ancestral house of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student Sharjeel Imam at Kako in Jehanabad district of Bihar late on Saturday night after an arrest warrant was issued against him by Aligarh police in a sedition case. Imam, one of the organisers of the anti-Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) protest at Delhi's Shaheen Bagh, had allegedly made "seditious" statements in Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) by calling for cutting off Assam from the rest of India.
Jehanabad SP Maneesh told TOI on Sunday that raids were carried out in search of Imam at Kako Bazar but they could not arrest him. Apart from UP, cases have also been filed against Imam in Assam and Delhi for his January 16 provocative speeches at AMU, a video of which later went viral on social media. In the video, he is heard giving a clarion call to Muslims to cut off Assam from India at Chicken's Neck. Chicken's Neck, or the Siliguri corridor, is a narrow stretch of land of about 22km, located in West Bengal, that connects northeastern states to the rest of India. This corridor is inhabited largely by Muslims.
The SP admitted that some family members of Imam were quizzed. Sleuths of intelligence agencies also interrogated Imam's close relatives. A few of them have been detained as well, he said. "We are cooperating with the police teams from outside the state in their investigation. There is no case pending against Imam here," the SP told TOI over phone.
Authoritative sources said the police team left for Patna where some relatives of Imam were living. "Imam's immediate family members live in Patna. We can't share more information related to the ongoing investigation as it's a sensitive issue. Senior officials are monitoring the police operation," an officer posted at the police headquarters said.
Imam has stated on his official Facebook profile that he is from Patna and has done schooling from St. Xavier's High School here as well as from DPS-Vasant Kunj in New Delhi. Later he got admitted to IIT-Bombay, from where he did postgraduation in computer science. He also worked as IT programmer at the University of Copenhagen before coming to JNU, where he is a student in Centre for Historical Studies.
Meanwhile, another video of Imam has surfaced, in which he is heard asking people at a sit-in, reportedly in Gaya district of Bihar, to come out of villages and block national highways in a bid to cut off vehicular movement between states.
"...The remedy for our problems is forcing the government to agree to our demands... The first thing we did was to unite people. This step was important because Muslim people stopped coming out on the streets. Last time, we were seen in 1985 but we have not come out on streets thereafter, especially not in such large numbers. The second step will be to use the anger of Muslims by forcefully stopping vehicular movement by sitting on the streets and not getting up till this (citizenship) law is taken back," he is heard saying in the video, the authenticity of which TOI could not verify.