Jamia violence case: Judge who discharged Sharjeel Imam, others recuses from another matter related to case

The judge who just last week discharged Sharjeel Imam and ten others in the 2019 Jamia violence case recused himself from hearing another matter related to the same incident, citing personal reasons..In an order passed on Friday, Additional Sessions Judge (ASJ) Arul Varma of the Saket Courts ordered the matter to be placed before the Principal District and Sessions for transfer.“Due to personal reasons, the undersigned hereby recuses from hearing the matter. Accordingly, let the present matter be put up before Ld. Principal District and Sessions Judge, South-East District, Saket Court for 13.02.2023, at 12:00PM, with a request to transfer the matter,” the court recorded..On February 4, Judge Verma had discharged Sharjeel Imam, Asif Iqbal Tanha, Safoora Zargar and eight others in a case related to violence at Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia in December 2019.The Delhi Police has filed a revision petition against the order. The plea was mentioned before the High Court on Friday and will be listed on Monday..In his order discharging Imam and others, ASJ Verma had pulled up the Delhi Police for filing an "ill-conceived" chargesheet, adding that their case was "devoid of irrefragable evidence".Though the crowd created havoc and disruption on that day, the police failed to apprehend the actual perpetrators and roped in Imam, Tanha, Zargar and others as "scapegoats", the court said."Marshalling the facts as brought forth from a perusal of the chargesheet and three supplementary chargesheets, this Court cannot but arrive at the conclusion that the police were unable to apprehend the actual perpetrators behind commission of the offence, but surely managed to rope the persons herein as scapegoats."The court had said that police have arbitrarily chosen to make some people from crowd as accused and others as police witnesses and this “cherry-picking” was detrimental to the precept of fairness..[Read Order]