A Delhi court on Wednesday granted five days custody parole to human rights activist and former president of the Alumni Association of Jamia Millia Islamia (AAJMI) Shifa Ur Rehman, an undertrial prisoner in the 2020 Delhi violence conspiracy case, to contest and campaign for the upcoming state assembly elections.Additional sessions judge Sameer Bajpai who was hearing Rehman’s interim bail plea for four weeks, directed his release from January 30 to February 3 for 12 hours each day upon a deposit of Rs 2.07 lakh as security expenses.”Although the present case and the case in which the co-accused Mohammad Tahir Hussain has been granted custody parole by the Supreme Court are altogether different, still when the Supreme Court has declined the interim bail of the co-accused and only granted custody parole to him, this court should also follow the same,” the court said.Rehman, contesting on a AIMIM ticket, was further ordered not to comment on his pending cases in his campaign, speech or press conferences.The Asaduddin Owaisi-led All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen (AIMIM) announced Rehman as its candidate for the Okhla constituency in the upcoming Delhi assembly elections.Rehman was among the activists who were at the forefront of the anti-CAA protests. He, along with several other student leaders and human rights activists were booked under the stringent UAPA provisions aside from IPC for allegedly being the “masterminds” of the “larger conspiracy” behind the 2020 Delhi riots, which left 53 people, mostly Muslims dead and several injured.On June 26, 2020, several UN experts called for the release of Rehman and other protestors, saying that their arrests seem “clearly designed to send a chilling message…that criticism of government policies will not be tolerated.”(With inputs from PTI)
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