The bench also upheld the trial court’s decision which had said that the allegations against Umar Khalid are prima facie true.
New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Tuesday rejected the bail plea of Umar Khalid in the alleged case of a larger conspiracy behind the 2020 Northeast Delhi riots.
Justices Siddharth Mridul and Rajnish Bhatnagar said the court did not find any merit in the bail application and rejected the plea. The bench also upheld the trial court’s decision which had said that the allegations against Khalid are prima facie true.
The high court bench, in a 52-page judgment, said, “The Ld Sessions Judge did not miss the wood for the trees and has extensively dealt with the contention of the rival parties to arrive at a just decision, which cannot be faulted, especially when at the stage of bail, the Ld Judge was mandated to only be satisfied to the extent of accusation being prima facie true and not conduct a mini trial.”
The court also observed that there seems to be a “premeditated conspiracy” to cause a disruptive bandh and a “pre-planned” protest at different spots of Delhi. The bench added that the protests and bandhs were engineered to escalate to confrontational chakka jam and incitement of violence and culminate in riots in natural course on specific dates. “The protest planned was not a typical protest normal in political culture or democracy but one far more destructive and injurious geared towards extremely grave consequences,” the court said.
Notably, a sessions court had earlier in March this year granted bail to former Congress councillor Ishrat Jahan in the case relating to the larger conspiracy behind the Delhi riots which took place in February 2020. The former councillor of East Delhi Municipal Corporation had been in jail since February 26, 2020 as the police had claimed her role in the riots that had taken place in North East Delhi which had left 53 people dead and over 700 injured.
