New Delhi: More than 10 JNU students accused of indiscipline during a 2016 event to mark the death anniversary of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru received letters from chief proctor Kaushal Kumar on Thursday, confirming the punishments handed to them by the university.

Four of these students are to submit their PhD theses before July 21. They include history scholar Umar Khalid (fined Rs 20,000 and rusticated for a semester); and former students' union president Kanhaiya Kumar (fined Rs 10,000).

"This has been done now with the sole intention of preventing us from submitting our theses," Umar said.

"It's bizarre because on the one hand the administration doesn't want students to do activism; on the other they are not allowing us to leave."

Umar, Kanhaiya and former PhD student Anirban Bhattacharya were arrested on sedition charges over the alleged chanting of "anti-national" slogans at the February 2016 event. They received bail weeks later. The police are yet to file a chargesheet.

"The administration has not a shred of proof against us. We'll seek legal recourse," Kanhaiya told The Telegraph. "It has become a norm to target activists under this government."

He cited the examples of Pooja Shukla, now in a Lucknow hospital after being detained during a hunger strike against the withholding of Lucknow University entrance results, and JNU's Dileep Yadav, evicted from his hostel just before he submitted his PhD thesis for not paying fines imposed for taking part in protests.

In addition to the punishments, ranging from rustication for varying terms to fines and hostel suspensions, the students have been asked to sign an undertaking not to participate in any agitation on the issue.

Vice-chancellor M. Jagadesh Kumar, who chairs the probe committee, and other university officials did not respond to calls messages and emails from this newspaper.

JNU's high-level enquiry committee had found 19 students and two outside academics guilty, but two of the students couldn't be identified from their first names.

Two others have left JNU. Anirban now works with an NGO in the capital, and former Democratic Students Federation leader Aishwarya Adhikari, whose MA degree has been withheld, is now a journalist.

Of the 15 current students, at least two have had their punishments waived, sources said.

A magisterial probe had found none of the JNU students guilty of chanting seditious slogans but alleged that several security guards had given false accounts of what had transpired to the police. One of them, security supervisor V.P. Yadav, was cited by the JNU probe committee.

The students had boycotted JNU's internal inquiry for allegedly not giving them a fair defence. The Delhi government had filed a case against three TV channels for allegedly airing doctored videos showing anti-India slogans being chanted at the JNU event.

After a 16-day hunger strike in 2016, the students received interim relief from Delhi High Court, which asked the vice-chancellor to decide on the students' appeals.

When the appeals committee confirmed the punishments in 2016, the high court stayed the confirmation and last year ordered the committee to hear the matter afresh after giving the students the opportunity to inspect the purported evidence.

The students were separately shown portions of the high-level probe committee report relating to each individual but their demand to cross-examine the witnesses was denied by the committee.

Besides Kanhaiya and Umar, African studies scholar Aswathi Nair and law and governance scholar Anant Narayan, a former union vice-president, are to submit their PhD theses this month.

Adult education scholar Mujeeb Gattoo has been rusticated for a year. Former students' union president Ashutosh Kumar's hostel suspension has been waived although he has been fined Rs 10,000.

ABVP leader Saurabh Sharma, who was fined for stopping a public bus during the incident on February 9, 2016, said he would protest the fine but demanded stringent action against the others.

Anirban, debarred from the campus for five years, believes he is unlikely to get his PhD certificate until the end of the ban despite having successfully defended his thesis on the history of tea garden workers in North Bengal recently.

"Apart from everything else it affects me as a citizen who believes that we are all being targeted in a systematic and a mala fide manner by an inquiry that was prejudiced against us from day one," Anirban said on Thursday.

"An administration that has been running at the orders of the ruling BJP and the RSS was at no point of time in a position of impartiality to conduct this inquiry. The court has repeatedly found fault with the inquiry process and has vindicated our apprehensions. We once again reject this."

He added: "At a more personal or immediate level, my viva for my PhD was conducted two weeks ago and I have been awarded my degree. But I apprehend that the administration will try to create hurdles in the way of me receiving my certificate, which adversely affects my prospects."

A correction. July 6, 2018
The JNU campus event was held in 2016, and not 2006 as mentioned in the first para of an earlier version of this report.