Kejriwal praises Kanhaiya Kumar's speech, says he had told PM not to mess with students

New Delhi: Hours after the release of JNUSU leader Kanhaiya Kumar, who was jailed for organising a controversial event at he JNU, from the Tihar Central Jail yesterday, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday said that he had warned the Prime Minister not to mess with students but he did not listen to him.

I had told the Prime Minister not to mess with student, but he did not pay heed to it, Kejriwal said in a tweet posted today.

मैंने कई बार बोला था -"मोदी जी, स्टूडेंट्स से पंगे मत लो। मोदी जी नहीं माने।" — Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) March 4, 2016

In yet another tweet, the AAP leader also heaped praise on the JNUSU leader for the amazing speech he delivered before the JNU students shortly after his release from the jail yesterday.

Heard Kanhaiya's speech many times. Amazing clarity of thought expressed wonderfully.He said wat most people have been feeling.God bless him

— Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) March 4, 2016

Kejriwal's praise for Kanhaiya Kumar, who was jailed for organising a controversial event on executed Parliament attack case convict Afzal Guru, comes at a times when the BJP-led central government is engaged in an intense verbal duel with the Congress and Left parties over allegedly curtailing the freedom of speech.

JNU student leader Kanhaiya Kumar, arrested for sedition 20 days ago, was released from the Tihar Jail on Thursday evening. He returned to the university campus amid noisy celebrations by hundreds of students and teachers.

As the sprawling Jawaharlal Nehru University campus was enveloped in darkness after street lights mysteriously went off before Kanhaiya Kuamr's return, slogan-shouting students massed in the open holding flaming torches and carrying placards and posters hailing the student leader.

The February 12 arrest of Kanhaiya Kumar, the first president of the JNU Students Union from the CPI-affiliated AISF, was widely denounced, more so after he was beaten up in a Delhi court on two days by some lawyers.

Delhi Police kept claiming that they had irrefutable evidence that Kanhaiya Kumar had raised anti-national slogans but failed to come up with the evidence in the court, weakening their case.

On Wednesday, the Delhi High Court gave a six-month interim bail to the jailed student leader but made wide-ranging observations on issues such as nationalism and love for the country that were quickly lapped up by the establishment and denounced by legal experts as unwarranted.

Judge Pratibha Rani told Kanhaiya Kumar to ensure that no "anti-national" activity took place in the JNU.