2020 Delhi riots: Accused should be in jail till they are acquitted or convicted, police tell HC

The Delhi Police on Wednesday urged the High Court to deny bail to those accused of being part of a “larger conspiracy” linked to the 2020 Delhi riots, claiming that they tried to defame the country in an orchestrated manner, PTI reported.

“If you are doing something against your nation then you better be in jail till you are acquitted or convicted,” Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the police, told a bench of Justices Naveen Chawla and Shalinder Kaur, according to the agency.

Mehta told the court that this was not an ordinary case, where those accused of a crime could argue that they should be released on bail since they had been incarcerated for a long time.

“In cases involving anti-national activities, long incarceration is not a factor,” the solicitor general was quoted as saying by The Indian Express. “This is an attack on the sovereignty of the country. By attacking the National Capital, it would have an effect on the entire country.

Mehta alleged that the accused persons tried to promote communal narratives by forming a WhatsApp group named “Muslim students of JNU" [Jawaharlal Nehru University”. He claimed that former JNU students Sharjeel Imam and Umar Khalid, by doing so, “broke the secular fabric” of the university, PTI reported.

The solicitor general referred to an allegedly inflammatory speech that Imam made during protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act.

“The intention was to cause national embarrassment at a global level,” Mehta alleged, according to PTI. “February 24, 2020 was the date when the US President was to visit. Sharjeel Imam delivers a speech four weeks before this clearly indicating the timeline for execution of conspiracy. He says we have four weeks.”

In his speeches, Imam had purportedly asked the protestors to “cut off Assam from India” by occupying the “Muslim-dominated Chicken’s Neck”. The comment was widely perceived as secessionist, but Imam had later claimed that he had called for peaceful protests to “block roads going to Assam” – “basically a call for chakka jam”.

The High Court bench of Justices Naveen Chawla and Shalinder Kaur on Wednesday reserved its judgement on the bail petitions of Umar Khalid, Sharjeel Imam, Gulfisha Fatima, Mohd Saleem Khan, Shifa ur Rehman, Athar Khan and Khalid Saifi. Another bench of Justices Subramonium Prasad and Harish Vaidyanathan Shankar reserved the bail petition of Tasleem Ahmed.

The bench of Justices Chawla and Kaur will hear the petition of a ninth accused person, Shadab Ahmed, on Thursday.

Clashes had broken out in North East Delhi in February 2020 between supporters of the Citizenship Amendment Act and those opposing it. The violence left 53 dead and hundreds injured.

The Delhi Police has claimed that the violence was part of a larger conspiracy to defame the Narendra Modi government and was plotted by those who organised the protests against the contentious citizenship law.

Imam, however, told the court in December that he did not call for violence in any of the speeches he gave during protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act.

Khalid, on his part, argued that merely being part of a WhatsApp group did not imply criminal activity.

Also read:

• Five years on, has India forgotten the victims of the Delhi riots?

• Five years later: Delhi Police’s riots conspiracy case is built on sand

• How bench changes have meant unending bail proceedings in the Delhi riots case