Delhi court rejects Umar Khalid's bail application in riots case

Umar Khalid is an accused in a UAPA case linked to the 2020 Delhi riots.Delhi's Karkardooma court on Tuesday rejected the bail application of former JNU student leader Umar Khalid in the larger conspiracy case linked to 2020 Delhi riots.Khalid had sought regular bail in the case on the grounds of delay and parity with other accused.

On May 13, special judge Sameer Bajpai had reserved the order on his bail application.

The Delhi police's special public prosecutor had opposed the bail plea calling as it "frivolous and baseless".

Umar Khalid's counsel had claimed that no terror allegations were levelled against the former in the Delhi police's charge sheet and his name was merely repeated in the document. He further argued that by repeating his name, a lie didn't become the truth.

Khalid's lawyer had also alleged a vicious media trial against his client.

The Delhi police have accused Umar Khalid of planning protests in 2020 at 23 places, which allegedly led to riots.Umar Khalid had moved the local court after withdrawing his plea from the Supreme Court in February.

"Is sharing messages a criminal or terror act?" his lawyer had said in the court.

The Special public prosecutor (SPP) had alleged that Umar Khalid was amplifying his narrative as part of a conspiracy by sharing certain links.

To this, Khalid's lawyer responded by saying that the latter was sharing the "correct narrative".

Earlier, his lawyer had argued that Natasha Narwal, Devangana Kalita and Asif Iqbal Tanha, who were granted bail by the Delhi high court, were accused of similar offenses.

The Special Public Prosecutor submitted that several people took to X (earlier Twitter) to influence Umar Khalid's bail hearing.Opposing Khalid's bail, the public prosecutor said: “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.”

He referred to tweets by activists and journalists like Teesta Seetalvad, Aakar Patel, Kaushik Raj, Swati Chaturvedi, Arju Ahmed and others.

He dismissed Khalid's lawyer's claim of the latter being subjected to a media trial. He accused Khalid of playing around with the media.