The Supreme Court on Friday deferred to September 19 the hearing of the bail pleas of rights activist Umar Khalid and three other accused in the 2020 Delhi riots case, saying it had received the files only hours earlier.
“We received the files (relating to bail) in these matters at 2.30am. We did not have the time to read it fully…. We will hear it on September 19,” a bench of Justice Aravind Kumar and Justice N.V. Anjaria told senior advocate Kapil Sibal appearing for Khalid.
Sibal informed the bench that besides Khalid, the court is to examine the bail pleas of co-accused Sharjeel Imam, Gulfisha Fatima and Meeran Haider.
Khalid has in his appeal before the apex court contended that Delhi High Court had erroneously rejected his bail plea although there was no material evidence to connect him to the riots. Khalid and the other are accused of being part of a larger conspiracy behind the riots, which claimed over 50 lives.
Khalid, in jail for close to five years, is facing charges under the stringent anti-terror law UAPA.
The high court had on September 2 dismissed his second bail plea. Those whose bail pleas were also turned down were Imam, Fatima, Mohd Saleem Khan, Shifa Ur Rehman, Athar Khan, Meeran Haider, Abdul Khalid Saifi, Shadab Ahmed and Tasleem Ahmed. The court held that the allegations against the accused were “grave” and it would not be proper to release them on bail at this juncture.
“In the present case, the probative value of the evidence against appellants Sharjeel Imam and Umar Khalid, as detailed out by us in the foregoing discussion, prima facie and at this stage, cannot be branded as weak,” it added.
The court observed that the unfettered right to protest would damage the constitutional framework and impinge upon the law-and-order situation. It took note of the submission of solicitor-general Tushar Mehta, representing the prosecution, that the protest was a premeditated, well-orchestrated conspiracy to commit unlawful activities threatening unity, integrity and sovereignty.