[Delhi riots conspiracy] Delhi High Court reserves verdict in Umar Khalid bail plea after hearing for over 20 days

More than four months after Umar Khalid filed an appeal seeking bail in the Delhi riots larger conspiracy case, the Delhi High Court on Friday finally reserved its judgment on his plea [Umar Khalid v State]. .Arguments in the case went on for more than 20 days. A Division Bench of Justice Siddharth Mridul and Justice Rajnish Bhatnagar reserved its verdict after hearing Special Public Prosecutor (SPP) Amit Prasad for the National Investigation Agency (NIA) and Senior Advocate Trideep Pais for Khalid..Khalid was arrested by Delhi Police in September 2020 and charged with criminal conspiracy, rioting, unlawful assembly as well as several sections of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. His bail plea was rejected by the Karkardoom court in March this year. .While Prasad had concluded his submissions for the Delhi Police on Wednesday, Pais finished his rebuttal submissions today. .Arguments on Khalid's bail had started in April and in the very first hearing, the judges remarked that they found his speech at Amravati obnoxious and inciteful. The judges also said that the speech might be innocuous in isolation but could have been a bugle call something larger.They questioned Pais on what Khalid meant when he used words like 'inquilab' and 'krantikari'. .As the hearings went into the month of May and composition of the bench also changed -- Justice Mridul started heading a different division bench -- the two judges said that they will sit almost on a daily basis as a special bench in the post-lunch session and complete the hearing in the matter.Though they initially intended to finish the arguments before June, seeing that the hearings were taking much longer time, the judges decided to continue after the court vacation in June. .Eventually, the hearings went on for more than 20 days prompting even the bench to remark that it seemed as if they were hearing an appeal against conviction and not a bail matter. .Here is a brief summary of arguments in support of Khalid's release and NIA's submissions opposing his bail:.Senior Advocate Trideep Pais' submission for Khalid Special court has not given any finding that his speech at Amravati is provocative;Phrases like "sab changa si” used by Khalid in his speech are meant as a satire and no person can be put behind bars for over 500 days because he used the phrase or because he used the word Jumla;Khalid is not named in any of the FIRs related to violence during the riots but the FIR came to be registered against him only after the police saw footage of his speech on Republic TV and News18;Threshold for bail in a case under UAPA is much lower than in more stringent statutes like MCOCA and NDPS;There was no "meeting of minds" or any physical manifestation of agreement between the accused which is necessary to establish conspiracy..SPP Amit Prasad's arguments in opposition to bail: Umar Khalid's membership of different WhatsApp groups whose members have been arrested for violence in Delhi shows there was a common conspiracy behind the riots and Khalid was one of its masterminds;Speeches made by Umar Khalid and others had common themes of Kashmir, triple-talaq and CAA/NRC. The aim was to create a feeling of fear among minority community;All the different accused were part of groups, met several times and hatched the conspiracy;The effort was to destabilise the country and malign its image in the international media and in front of international leaders including then US President Donald Trump;Khalid acted as a silent whisperer and was one of the brains behind the protests and riots;Khalid and others were managing each of the protest sites, including Shaheen Bagh, and effort was to create discontent among minorities; Khalid and others created 24*7 protest sites near mosques, arranged materials, attacked police personnel and the violence finally spread to non-Muslim areas;Trial court has dealt with every recorded evidence. .Umar Khalid was part of WhatsApp groups on CAA protests, acts should be seen in totality: Why Delhi court refused bail

[Delhi riots conspiracy] Delhi High Court reserves verdict in Umar Khalid bail plea after hearing for over 20 days

Prashant Jha

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