A student makes her speech as JNU students gather for a protest against the arrest of a student union leader in New Delhi, India, Monday.

Violence broke out Monday at a New Delhi court where a university student leader was due to appear on a sedition charge, even as massive protests continued to paralyze one of India’s top universities whose students are accused of voicing anti-Indian slogans at a largely peaceful rally.

Television footage showed unidentified men punching and shoving journalists and students from Delhi’s prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) as they gathered to attend Kanhaiya Kumar’s hearing.

Men wearing lawyers’ robes snatched reporters’ phones and notebooks and pushed them to the ground, accusing them of being “pro-Pakistan” and “anti-Indian,” an AFP reporter at the court said.

A visibly shaken female correspondent from Indian broadcaster NDTV reported that several journalists and students were beaten and she was threatened with physical assault as she attempted to record the violence on her phone.

Emotions have been running high since Kumar’s arrest on Friday on claims of seditious behavior at a rally to mark the third anniversary of a Kashmiri separatist’s execution.

Students have since staged protests at campuses around the country in support of Kumar, accusing India’s Hindu nationalist government of overreacting and misusing a sedition law to quash dissent.

The government has stood firm, with Home Minister Rajnath Singh warning that “anyone who raises anti-India slogans or tries to question national unity” will be punished.

Local media accused police of doing little to stop Monday’s chaos, amid claims on social media that right-wing Hindu nationalists were behind the violence.

Local lawmaker O.P. Sharma, from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, denied taking part. He told reporters he was only “rounding up those who raise pro-Pakistan slogans” outside the court.

Separatist Mohammed Afzal Guru was hanged in 2013 over a deadly attack on the Indian parliament in 2001. He had always denied plotting the attack which was carried out by Kashmiri militants.

Speaking before the violence, Delhi police commissioner B.S. Bassi defended Kumar’s arrest, saying there was evidence to back a sedition charge.

Several political commenters said the arrest is an attempt to silence dissent.

“The arrest of Kanhaiya Kumar and the crackdown on political dissent at JNU suggest that we are living under a government that is both rabidly malign and politically incompetent,” Pratap Bhanu Mehta, the head of the Center for Policy Research, a leading New Delhi-based think tank, wrote in an opinion piece over the weekend.

The head of the ruling BJP, Amit Shah, said the government would not tolerate what he called “anti-national activities” at JNU, which has a long history of left-wing student activism.

“The people of our country want to know if supporting Afzal Guru means freedom of expression. Is attacking our parliament freedom of expression?” he told reporters on Monday.

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