No Relief For Umar Khalid As Supreme Court Adjourns His Bail Plea In Delhi Riots Case For 2 Weeks

The Delhi police had opposed the bail plea of Umar Khalid. He had then approached the High Court challenging the dismissal of his bail application by the trial court in March 2022.

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday adjourned the hearing of the bail plea filed by former Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student Umar Khalid in an Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) case related to the alleged conspiracy behind the North-East Delhi riots in February 2020. A bench of Justices Aniruddha Bose and Bela M Trivedi adjourned the matter for two weeks.

“This has to go to a non-miscellaneous day. List it after two weeks on a non-miscellaneous day,” the bench said. Khalid had approached the top court challenging an October 2022 Delhi High Court verdict that had denied bail to him. Khalid, arrested by Delhi Police in September 2020, in the High Court had sought bail on grounds that he neither had any "criminal role" in the violence in the city's North-East area nor any "conspiratorial connect" with any other accused in the case.

The Delhi police had opposed the bail plea of Khalid. He had then approached the High Court challenging the dismissal of his bail application by the trial court in March 2022. He was charged with criminal conspiracy, rioting, unlawful assembly as well as several sections of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA). Besides Khalid, Sharjeel Imam, activist Khalid Saifi, JNU students Natasha Narwal and Devangana Kalita, Jamia Coordination Committee members Safoora Zargar, former AAP councillor Tahir Hussain and several others were booked under the stringent law in the case.

The violence had erupted during the protests against CAA and NRC and had left 53 people dead and over 700 injured.