Jammu and Kashmir police have dropped terror charges against the seven university students accused of cheering Australia’s win in the cricket World Cup final, the Valley’s main students’ body said.

The seven students have been granted bail, the unlikely concessions coming amid protests by Valley students against an allegedly blasphemous post by a non-local student of NIT Srinagar.

There have been allegations that the police had acted tough on local student protesters and that little action had been taken against the non-local NIT student, who has been booked for inciting hate but was not arrested.

The Jammu and Kashmir Students Association said in a statement that charges under the anti-terror law UAPA against the seven arrested students had been dropped.

“All seven students, enrolled at Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences & Technology (SKUAST) in Ganderbal, Kashmir, were initially arrested and charged under UAPA after Australia defeated India in the World Cup on November 19. They have now been granted bail, with Adv Shafiq Bhat serving as the counsel representing the students,” the statement said.

Shafiq Ahmad Bhat, the lawyer, confirmed the students had been granted bail by the chief judicial magistrate in Ganderbal. Bhat said the students had been released late on Saturday evening.

The seven had been arrested on November 20, a day after a non-local student at the university lodged a police complaint alleging harassment at the hands of local students for cheering for the Indian team.

The arrests, kept under wraps for over a week to prevent a flare-up, were followed by protests at NIT Srinagar over the allegedly blasphemous post.

The police later broke their silence, claiming the seven students had been arrested not for exercising their freedom of expression but for terrorising those who expressed pro-India feelings. The force accused the students of doing it at militants’ behest but offered no evidence.

“It (students’ action) is (also) about normalising an abnormal: that everyone hates India (as different from the government of the day and party in power) ‘openly’. This abnormal and false thing is practised mostly on the back of separatist and terrorist networks,” the Ganderbal police, who arrested the seven, had said.