NEW DELHI: India’s Supreme Court on Friday refused to consider a bail plea from a left-wing student leader whose arrest for sedition triggered demonstrations in universities across the country against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling nationalist group.

Rivals said the government was trying to crush dissent after it ordered police to detain Kanhaiya Kumar, the head of the Jawaharlal Nehru University students union, for commemorating the anniversary of the execution of a Kashmiri separatist.

India’s top court suggested Kumar, 28, approach the lower Delhi High Court for bail, saying it didn’t have to intervene in the case and that lower courts were qualified to handle a bail application.

Kumar had sought the Supreme Court’s intervention after a previous hearing in a lower court descended into chaos as lawyers chanting nationalist slogans barged into the compound and threw stones at reporters in a case that has become politically charged. The attack which India said was masterminded by Pakistan-based militant groups nearly led to war between the nuclear rivals. Guru was convicted for providing logistics to the militants and hanged in 2013.

Protests for caste benefits turn violent

India’s paramilitary forces shot and killed one person on Friday as protests for government benefits turned violent in northern India, police said.

Thousands of people belonging to the Jat agricultural community were protesting in Rohtak and other towns in Haryana state, to demand an increase in their caste quota benefits, which include guaranteed government jobs or university spots.

Police officer Saurabh Singh says up to 20 people were injured in the clashes in Rohtak as protesters also fired and hurled rocks at paramilitary forces. The town is 70 kilometers (45 miles) west of New Delhi.

The injured included one paramilitary soldier hit by a bullet fired by a protester, Singh said.

New Delhi Television news channel said the protesters also burned cars, police jeeps and trucks, blocked traffic and even attacked a state minister’s home and tried to set it on fire.