Northeast Delhi riots: Court to hear Umar Khalid's bail plea today

The former JNU student, described as ‘mastermind’ by the Delhi Police, filed a fresh petition last month seeking his release from jail.

A Delhi court is scheduled to hear on Saturday a plea filed by activist Umar Khalid seeking his release from jail after he was arrested for “conspiracy” over the riots that took place in the Capital in February last year. The court will hear arguments on a fresh bail plea filed by Khalid, who did so last month after the prosecution raised objections towards maintainability of his earlier plea, which led to the former JNU student withdrawing it.

On September 23, the hearing was adjourned to October 9 as Additional Sessions Judge Amitabh Rawat was on leave.

In a previous hearing, Khalid’s lawyer, senior advocate Trideep Pais, argued before ASJ Rawat that the Delhi Police’s chargesheet in the case read like a script of the Amazon Prime web series “Family Man.” Pais said, “The chargesheet uses rhetoric like ‘veteran of sedition’ for my client. It, therefore, reads like a 9pm news script of one of those shouting news channels. Please understand that the investigating officer is writing all this in a chargesheet, and not in a script of Family Man.”

“This is the kind of stuff that is read and peddled so that public opinion can be created in order to substitute for the lack of evidence. This is done with the objective to unfairly prosecute people when there is no material to do so lawfully,” he further argued.

Khalid, whom the police have described as the “mastermind” behind the February 2020 violence, has been booked under the stringent anti-terror UAPA law, as are several others. Communal riots broke out in northeast Delhi as a result of clashes between those supporting the contentious CAA and those opposed to it. At least 53 people lost their lives while hundreds were injured.