Almost three years after an FIR (first information report) was filed, the Delhi Police on Monday filed a 1200 page chargesheet at a city court against former Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union (JNUSU) president Kanhaiya Kumar and others, saying he was leading a procession and supported seditious slogans raised on the varsity campus in February 2016.

Police also charged former JNU students Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya for allegedly shouting anti-India slogans during an event on the university's campus on February 9, 2016, to commemorate the hanging of Parliament-attack mastermind Afzal Guru.

As many as 36 others, including Communist Party of India (CPI) leader D Raja's daughter Aprajita, Shehla Rashid (then vice-JNUSU president), Rama Naga, Ashutosh Kumar and Banojyotsna Lahiri, all former students of JNU, have been named in column 12 of the charge sheet due to insufficient evidence against them.

CNBC-TV18 caught up with Colin Gonsalves, senior advocate at Supreme Court; Vijay Kumar, president of ABVP, JNU and Shehla Rashid, former VP, JNUSU, to discuss whether the sedition law is still being used to suppress dissenting voices.

Colin Gonsalves said, "There is a lot of confusion about what sedition actually means. Even among our colleagues and friends, even their understanding may be not exactly correct."

"The English law was what the police said today. It says if you say something against the crown, which is if you say something against Prime Minister Modi, then that is sedition. But in Indian law - words themselves are not enough, words plus armed action and rebellion to overthrow the state is sedition,"

Vijay Kumar said, "I was there and they were not raising slogans against the government. Each and every citizen of India, they can protest against the decision of government but here they were not doing dissent against the government. They were protesting against the hanging of terrorist Afzal Guru and they were saying anti-national slogans, they were not demanding jobs."

Shehla Rashid said, "This is a completely bogus case, this is a completely cooked up. I was not even on the campus and my name has been put in, that is how much of a fake case this is. What that shows is the government has completely lost face on every issue, it has completely lost the discourse."