Delhi Court denies bail for Umar Khalid in riots case

PTC News Desk: In the broader conspiracy case connected to the 2020 Delhi riots, Umar Khalid, a former JNU student leader, applied for bail, but it was denied by Delhi’s Karkardooma court on Tuesday.

Due to a UAPA case, Umar Khalid has been incarcerated since September 2020. Due process and equity with other accused parties were the reasons behind Khalid’s request for regular bail in this case. The ruling regarding his bail application was reserved by Special Judge Sameer Bajpai on May 13. The bail request was rejected by the special public prosecutor of the Delhi police, who described it as “frivolous and baseless”.

The lawyer for Umar Khalid had stated that his client was not accused of terrorism in the Delhi police charge sheet and that the document just repeated his name. He went on to say that a lie did not become the truth just because his name was said again.

Also, Khalid’s attorney claimed that his client was the victim of a brutal media trial. Umar Khalid has been charged by the Delhi police with organising protests at 23 locations in 2020 that resulted in violence. After abandoning his appeal from the Supreme Court in February, Umar Khalid filed a motion at the local court.

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His lawyer had asked the judge, “Is sharing messages a criminal or terror act?”

By disclosing specific links, the Special Public Prosecutor (SPP) had claimed that Umar Khalid was exaggerating his story as a part of a plot. In response, Khalid’s attorney stated that the client was presenting the “true story.”

His attorney had previously contended that Asif Iqbal Tanha, Devangana Kalita, and Natasha Narwal—all of whom the Delhi High Court had granted bail—were charged with comparable crimes. The Special Public Prosecutor stated that a number of people tried to sway Umar Khalid’s bail hearing by using X, an older version of Twitter.

“WhatsApp chats also revealed that he is in the habit of creating media and social media narratives at the time of listing bail applications of the person booked in cases to clearly influence bail hearings,” stated the public prosecutor in opposition to Khalid’s bail.

He made reference to tweets from many journalists and activists, including Teesta Seetalvad, Aakar Patel, Kaushik Raj, Arju Ahmed, and Swati Chaturvedi. He rejected the assertion made by Khalid’s attorney that the latter was the focus of a media trial. Khalid was accused by him of manipulating the media.

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