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The Delhi High Court, on Tuesday, September 2, denied bail to former JNU scholars and student activists Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam, and seven others arrested under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) in the 2020 North-East Delhi riots case.
Others involved in the case include Athar Khan, Khalid Saifi, Mohd Saleem Khan, Shifa ur Rehman, Meeran Haider, Gulfisha Fatima and Shadab Ahmed. Umar Khalid has been behind bars since September 2020.
According to Mathrubhumi, a bench of Justices Navin Chawla and Shalinder Kaur dismissed the batch of appeals filed by them challenging trial court orders that denied them bail, saying that there was no ground for granting bail under the UAPA provisions invoked in the case.
In July this year, the Justice Chawla-led Bench reserved its decision after hearing the oral submissions advanced on behalf of the accused and Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, who appeared on behalf of the Delhi Police.
Opposing the bail pleas, Solicitor General Mehta, the second highest law officer of the Union government, said that the long incarceration of the accused individuals should not be a ground for their release on bail pending trial since they were involved in a “well-orchestrated criminal conspiracy” to put the entire country to shame ahead of the visit of the US President Donald Trump in 2020. He also alleged that there was a preparation “to divide the nation based on a particular religion”.
All of them were arrested during widespread protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).
The controversial CAA, which was passed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Union government in 2019, sought to fast-track citizenship for illegal migrants who came to India from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, or Pakistan and belong to the Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi, or Christian religious communities. The Act notably excluded Muslims, triggering countrywide protests alleging that the legislation went against the tenets of the Indian Constitution.
According to a Live Law report, these are the date of arrest of the nine persons
