Pune's famous Fergusson College has withdrawn its complaint to the police asking it to identify and punish students who the administration accuses of shouting anti-India slogans at a campus event on Tuesday.


The principal, Ravindra Pardesi, has in a letter to the police claimed that the event was not granted permission.


However, he told NDTV this morning that he is retracting the complaint and spoke vaguely of "a typographical error."


The request for police action comes just weeks after three students at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi were arrested on sedition charges.


All have been granted bail. Kanhaiya Kumar, the first among them to be arrested, has been catapulted into the national political landscape with opposition parties holding him up as an example of the country's determination to fight the government's alleged crackdown on free speech and dissent.


The event at Fergusson was organized by JNU student leaders of the ABVP, which is affiliated to the BJP. At the meeting, Left-leaning and other students protested against the event, describing it as "illegal" and chanting "azaadi" (freedom) slogans.


Upon his release from bail, Kumar delivered a fiery speech with repeated references to "azaadi", usually associated with calls for Kashmir's independence from India. Kumar said students like him want to fight for azaadi not from India, but from poverty, communalism, caste politics and other issues that divide India.

Pic: JNU students protesting last month over the arrest of their student body president Kanhaiya Kumar