NEW DELHI: “It may take 1-2 minutes for this,” the Supreme Court observed on Wednesday as it adjourned the bail plea of former JNU student leader Umar Khalid accused of conspiring behind the North East Delhi riots in February 2020.A bench of Justices AS Bopanna and MM Sundresh acceded to Delhi police’s request of granting them more time for filing their response.
In the brief hearing that transpired, Advocate Rajat Nair for Delhi Police sought time to file their reply. “Kindly give me some time to file reply. Chargesheet is voluminous and runs into 1,000 pages,” the counsel said.Objecting to the delay, Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal appearing for Khalid said, “This is a bail matter, what counter is to be filed? Man is inside for 2 years and 10 months.”Notably, SC had sought Delhi Police’s response on the issue on May 18 and posted the pleas to be heard after 6 weeks.
Khalid was arrested by the Delhi police on September 13, 2020 in a case alleging that the riots were a pre-planned conspiracy between Khalid and his associates from different organisations. It was also alleged that he had made provocative speeches at different locations and had appealed to people to come out & block the streets, during the visit of former US President Donald Trump to publicise targets on minorities at an international level. The police had booked him and his associates under the anti-terror law Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and provisions of the IPC.
Khalid had approached SC against Delhi HC’s order of rejecting his bail. Upholding the order dated March 24, 2022 passed by the lower court of rejecting his bail, Justices Rajnish Bhatnagar and Siddharth Mridul while rejecting his bail said that there appears to be a premeditated conspiracy for causing disruptive chakka-jam and pre- planned protests at different planned sites in Delhi, which was engineered to escalate to confrontational chakka-jam and incitement to violence and culminate in riots in natural course on specific dates.
“Protests and riots prima-facie seem to be orchestrated at the conspiratorial meetings held from December, 2019 till February, 2020,” it said.The bench had said that the protest planned was “not a typical protest” normal in political culture or democracy but one far more destructive and injurious geared towards extremely grave consequences.