Khalid, Imam and others were booked under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and provisions of the IPC, accusing them of being the “masterminds” of the violence. The violence left more than 50 people, mostly Muslims, dead and several injured.The Guardian had called the Delhi riots as the “worst religious conflict to engulf the capital in decades,” but hastened to note that “questions have persisted about the role that the Delhi police played in enabling the violence, which was predominately Hindu mobs attacking Muslims…”The catalyst for the riots, according to The Guardian, is widely acknowledged to have been a comment by Kapil Mishra, a BJP leader, who on February 23 issued a public ultimatum declaring that if the police did not clear the streets of a protest against the new citizenship law seen as anti-Muslim, his supporters would be “forced to hit the streets.”While challenging the trial court orders refusing bail, Khalid and others cited their long incarceration and parity with other co-accused who were granted bail.On Tuesday, SPP Prasad reiterated the stand that Imam and others gave inflammatory speeches calling for a “chakka jam” and protests were not organic.”Shaheen Bagh (protest site) was the brainchild of Sharjeel Imam, with resistance from locals,” he said.He read Imam’s speech advocating “cutting the chicken neck” to block assess to Assam and “challenging the sovereignty of the country to implement a law”.It was further argued that the protestors were “not on road on their own” and the violence of February 2020 was “exactly that they had planned”.Prasad claimed the accused tried to “defer” the accountability by claiming BJP’s Kapil Mishra came with a pro-CAA group and gave a speech, following which the violence took place.He had argued speeches by Khalid, Imam and others created a sense of fear after a common reference to CAA-NRC, Babri mosque, triple talaq and Kashmir.It was argued that statements of several protected witnesses established the accused persons were not “innocent bystanders” who merely organised protest sites, but planned to cause violence through WhatsApp groups, resulting in registration of 751 FIRs related to the riots.The police alleged “meeting of minds” of the accused persons, the transportation and use of women for stone pelting and the strategic management of protest sites by Jamia students.Most bail pleas, including the ones by Imam, Gulfisha Fatima and Khalid Saifi, were filed in 2022, and heard by different benches from time to time.Umar Khalid moved the high court in 2024 seeking bail for the second time, after his plea was dismissed by the high court in October, 2022.The matter would be heard next on February 12.(With inputs from Online Desk)
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