NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court on Monday reserved its order on the bail plea by student activist Gulfisha Fatima challenging the earlier trial court order denying her bail in relation to a case linked to February 2020 riots. After hearing the matter, a division bench of Justices Siddharth Mridul and Rajnish Bhatnagar said: “Arguments heard, order reserved.”
During a hearing on January 7, her counsel, Advocate Sushil Bajaj had concluded his submissions on Fatima’s bail plea. Bajaj stated that in Jafrabad, where some violence happened, it is accepted that Gulfisha was part of the protest there. And the creation of a WhatsApp group for the protest was nothing illegal, he had argued. “It has been alleged that I gave chilli powder to the women, however, there was no recovery from me,” Bajaj had said.
He had earlier argued that each witness was a pardoned accused, masquerading as a witness against Gulfisha and speaking like a “Greek Porus”. A bare reading of the statements revealed that all these witnesses were part of the protests in the February 2020 riots and they were there in all the meetings, WhatsApp groups, and even present at protest sites, Fatima’s counsel said, adding that the first step should be to corroborate the evidence.
“They had given their statements only when the police started issuing notices to them and they were summoned,” it was further submitted. The prosecution was relying on “unpardoned accused masquerading as witnesses against her”, the court was told.
Her counsel also referred to an example of a former witness who was later booked as an accused by the Delhi Police for his role in the riots. They also mentioned her arrest on April 2020 and that she was booked in another FIR a month earlier. The counsel clarified that she was sitting in protest in Jafrabad. “If she had been on the run, she would have been hiding somewhere and not found sitting at a protest site,” he said.
On March 17, 2022, Additional Sessions Judge Amitabh Rawat of the Karkardooma court, had rejected her bail application, saying, she was found as present in North East Delhi at the time of the riots and as per witness statements and ‘prima facie, allegations against her are true.’