NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court admitted the bail plea of former Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student leader Umar Khalid on Tuesday. The apex court has agreed to look into the evidence available against the charges levelled by Delhi Police against Khalid.
Khalid was arrested by the Delhi Police on September 13, 2020, in connection with the February 2020 North East Delhi riots case. He was booked under the anti-terror law Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) and provisions of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
The Delhi Police had alleged that he had made several provocative speeches and appealed to people to come out to block the streets during the visit of former US President Donald Trump, to publicise the government’s targeting of minorities at an international level.
The bench of Justices Aniruddha Bose and Bela Trivedi said that the plea would require a detailed hearing and posted it for hearing after four weeks.
“In this matter, we will have to go document by document to match (the evidence)... Tomorrow may not be possible... We will grant leave. You file something on what is the evidence available insofar as offences under Chapters 4 and 6 [of the UAPA] are concerned, and how according to you it is not matching... Now chargesheet has been submitted. We will have to match the ingredients of the offences with the charges,” the Supreme Court bench said.
The court was considering Khalid’s plea against the Delhi High Court’s order on March 24, 2022, which had earlier rejected his bail application.
Upholding the Kakardooma district court’s order, Justices Rajnish Bhatnagar and Siddharth Mridul of the Delhi High Court had rejected bail to Khalid, remarking that there appears to be a premeditated conspiracy to cause disruptive chakka-jam and pre-planned protests at different sites across Delhi.
A plan was engineered to escalate the confrontational chakka-jam and incite violence, which would culminate in riots in the natural course on specific dates, it had said.
Khalid, appearing through Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal, told the top court that the provisions under UAPA that deal with terrorist activities are not applicable in his case. “We have given the pages (of evidence) and everything. Besides the evidence, our first submission in Sections 16, 17 and 18 do not apply at all,” Sibal told the court.