A Delhi court reserved its order on the bail pleas of Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam in the 2020 Delhi riots conspiracy case after hearing both sides. The activists argued prolonged detention without trial violates their fundamental right to liberty.
A Delhi court on Saturday kept its decision pending on the bail applications filed by activists Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam in the broader conspiracy case connected to the 2020 Delhi riots.
Additional Sessions Judge Sameer Bajpai reserved the order after hearing arguments from both sides, and is expected to pronounce the decision later in the evening.
Khalid and Imam have sought bail, arguing that their continued detention without the trial beginning violates their fundamental right to liberty.
Khalid’s plea also stated that although his earlier request had been rejected by the Supreme Court, later judicial developments amount to a change in circumstances.
He pointed to the court’s observations made in May in another case, where it said “bail is the rule” even when the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) is invoked.
The fresh bail pleas were submitted after the Supreme Court on January 5 declined to grant bail to them in the UAPA case.
In Imam’s application, he contended that there had been no significant development in the proceedings even six months after the Supreme Court’s judgment refusing bail, and that he has been in custody for nearly six years without trial.
The plea added that charges have yet to be framed in the case, despite the prolonged incarceration of both activists.
Khalid similarly cited prolonged detention and delays in the trial, stating that he has spent nearly six years in custody without charges being framed. He argued that the trial was unlikely to start soon given the large number of accused, witnesses, and documents relied upon by the prosecution.
The plea referred to the Supreme Court’s observations in its May 18 order in a terror-related matter, where, while granting bail to an accused, a two-judge bench criticised the January 5 verdict and stressed that anti-terror laws should not be used to enable indefinite detention.
Khalid further argued that a change in circumstances makes the present bail plea maintainable even after the Supreme Court’s earlier rejection.
The applications also relied on Supreme Court rulings on prolonged incarceration, including Union of India versus K A Najeeb and Vernon Gonsalves versus State of Maharashtra, to contend that statutory limits on bail under UAPA cannot override constitutional safeguards when the trial is unlikely to conclude within a reasonable time.
Earlier, On January 5, the Supreme Court refused bail to Khalid and Imam in the larger conspiracy case, though it granted relief to co-accused Gulfisha Fatima, Meeran Haider, Shifa Ur Rehman, Mohammad Saleem Khan, and Shadab Ahmad.
Noting the matter, a bench of Justices Aravind Kumar and N V Anjaria observed that there was a prima facie case against Khalid and Imam under UAPA and held that it was not proper to treat all accused alike due to the hierarchy of participation.
Khalid, Imam, and several others were booked under UAPA and IPC provisions for allegedly being part of a larger conspiracy behind the February 2020 riots in northeast Delhi.
The violence unfolded during protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) and the proposed National Register of Citizens (NRC), leaving 53 people dead and over 700 injured.