Delhi riots case made on half truths: Umar Khalid in bail plea

Senior advocate Trideep Pais, appearing for Khalid, read out the statements of three protected witnesses and claimed that they were contradictory and cooked up.

Seeking bail in a northeast Delhi riots case, former JNU student leader Umar Khalid told a city court on Monday that a case can’t be made against him on half truths and claimed that contradictory statements of witnesses showed that he was falsely implicated.

File photo of Umar Khalid (Pic: Hindustan Times)

Senior advocate Trideep Pais, appearing for Khalid, read out the statements of three protected witnesses and claimed that they were contradictory and cooked up.

During the hearing, Pais read out a police allegation from the charge sheet regarding an alleged secret meeting in Delhi’s Seelampur area on January 23 and 24 last year in which Khalid had allegedly directed that the protests be escalated to riots.

Denying that it was a secret meeting, Pais argued that its pictures were uploaded on Facebook: “I did not know that secret meeting were put up on Facebook.”