Delhi High Court defers hearing on bail pleas of Umar Khalid, Sharjeel Imam to May 6

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, April 29

The Delhi High Court on Friday deferred hearing till May 6 on bail pleas of Sharjeel Imam and Umar Khalid—facing sedition and UAPA charges in the February 2020 Delhi riots case—in view of the Supreme Court’s decision to examine the validity of the sedition law.

A Bench of Justice Siddharth Mridul and Justice Rajnish Bhatnagar—which issued notice on Imam’s petition against rejection of his bail plea by the trial court—listed the matter for further hearing along with Khalid’s bail plea on May 6, a day after the top court is scheduled to take up petitions challenging the validity of sedition law under Section 124A of the IPC.

“Anything that may have a bearing, however remote, we should wait (for it). Like you said, the outcome is going to be seminal,” the Bench told senior counsel Trideep Pais, who represented Khalid.

Pais, however, pointed out that the Supreme Court was unlikely to conclude on May 5 and that the bail pleas were not limited to sedition and were also related to the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).

Last week, while granting time to the Delhi Police to respond to the bail plea, the court had noted that Khalid’s speech, which forms the basis for the allegations against him, was obnoxious, prima facie not acceptable and that certain statements in the speech were “offensive per se”. It had expressed displeasure over the use of the term “jumla” by the former JNU student in his criticism of the Prime Minister in the speech, and said there has to be a ‘laxman rekha’ even for criticism.

Khalid, Imam and several others have been booked under the stringent UAPA for being the “masterminds” of the February 2020 riots, which had left 53 people dead and over 700 injured during the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act and the National Register of Citizens. The trial court had dismissed the bail petitions of Khalid and Imam on March 24 and April 11, respectively.

Noting that Imam and Khalid were accused of being “co-conspirators” in the case, the Bench said it would hear both the bail matters together. “If we have to hear the co-accused, we might as well do it in one go,” it said.

It also listed for hearing on May 6 another bail plea by Imam in a separate Delhi riots case.

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