Delhi High Court grants interim protection from arrest to Nadeem Khan in enmity, conspiracy case

The Delhi High Court on Tuesday granted interim protection from arrest to Mohammad Wasiq Nadeem Khan, the National Secretary of Association for Protection of Civil Rights (ACPR), booked by the Delhi Police for promoting enmity and criminal conspiracy after a video of him went viral on YouTube. .Justice Jasmeet Singh, while granting relief to Khan, ordered that he should not leave Delhi without informing the Investigating Officer. Khan was also directed to cooperate with the police investigation.The Court was hearing two petitions by Khan and ACPR seeking stay on investigation and quashing of first information report (FIR) against him for the offence of promoting enmity and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony, public mischief and criminal conspiracy. .Khan was requested to appear before Delhi Police,in relation to a video put up on social media relating to an exhibition by ACPR in Hyderabad.According to Indian Express, the video showed a person who had set up a stall at an exhibition and standing in front of multiple display boards. As per the FIR, the person was gesturing towards a banner and talking about ‘Nadeem, Akhlaq, Rohit Vemula, Pehlu Khan’, and the 2020 CAA/ NRC protests at Shaheen Bagh and the Delhi riots, portraying a particular community as victims and inciting people.On analysing this video, the police said it found that the display stall was set up by APCR and the person in the video was Khan.Khan has claimed that the theme of the video is regarding minority rights, hate speech and discrimination. As per his plea, he has not made any false comment in the video that could incite disharmony and that he was well within his fundamental rights to free speech under Article 19 of the Indian Constitution. He contended that the FIR does not contain any offence punishable for more than 3 years.It was also submitted that no adverse incident has occurred due to his video and no complaint was made by anyone that could lead to registration of an FIR.The Court issued notice on the petitions and posted the matter for further hearing on December 6. .Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal and advocates Tara Narula, Tamanna Pankaj, Shivangi Sharma, Ahmed Ibrahim, Rupali Samuel, Shahrukh Alam, Deeksha Dwivedi and Ritesh Dhar Dubey appeared for Khan and ACPR.Additional Standing Counsel (Crl.) Sanjeev Bhandari with Advocates Charu Sharma, Arjit Sharma, Vaibhav Vats and Nikunj Bindal appeared for the State.[Read Orders]