Delhi police on Thursday strongly opposed the bail pleas of Umar Khalid and others in the 2020 communal riots, claiming the accused had planned a pan-India conspiracy “to strike at the very heart of the sovereignty and integrity of the country
by destroying the communal harmony” and effect a “regime change”.

Besides Delhi, the police cited alleged instances of violence in Bengal, Assam, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala to buttress the argument of a larger conspiracy to destabilise the country.

A bench of Justices Aravind Kumar and N.V. Anjaria will on Friday take up the bail plea of Khalid and the other accused facing prosecution under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) in connection with the 2020 Delhi communal riots that had killed over 50 people, injured scores and led to the destruction of public and private properties. Besides Khalid, the bail pleas of three other accused — Sharjeel Imam, Gulfisha Fatima and Meeran Haider — have been listed for consideration on Friday.

The Delhi police, through deputy commissioner Amit Kaushik, have charged the accused with deliberately delaying the trial process and argued that they cannot claim bail on the ground of being in prison for five years.

The following are some of the key reasons cited by the Centre to oppose the bail pleas:

• Ocular and irrefutable documentary as well as technical evidence against the petitioners showing their intrinsic, deep-rooted and fervent complicity in engineering nationwide riots on communal lines

• The conspiracy hatched, nurtured and executed by the petitioner was to strike at the very heart of the sovereignty and integrity of the country by destroying the communal harmony, instigating the crowd not only to abrogate public order but to instigate them to an extent of armed rebellion. The international theory developed in the past few years has termed these kinds of organised/sponsored protests as “Regime Change Operation(s)”

• The materials on record, including the chats referencing US President Donald Trump, establish beyond doubt that the instant conspiracy was pre-planned to be executed at the time when the US President was to make an official visit to India.

Some of the instances cited by the Delhi police of a pan-India conspiracy, on which the cops claimed to have evidence:

• In Bengal, protests escalated into riots in Murshidabad, Howrah, Malda, Nadia and North 24-Parganas. Incidents included the torching of five trains (at Lalgola and Krishnapur) and vandalism at four railway stations (Uluberia, Harishchandrapur)

• In Uttar Pradesh, violence broke out across more than 20 districts, including Aligarh, Meerut, Bijnor, Kanpur, Firozabad, Muzaffarnagar, Rampur, Varanasi and Lucknow

• In Assam, violence accompanied protests in Guwahati, Dibrugarh, Kamrup (Metro) and neighbouring districts. At least five persons were reported dead, while 175 individuals were arrested and 1,406 detained statewide.