Delhi riots 2020: HC defers hearing till Nov 21 on bail pleas by Khalid Saifi

The Delhi High Court on Friday deferred hearing till November 21 on bail pleas of Khalid Saifi and other accused persons in a UAPA case related to the alleged conspiracy behind the 2020 riotsA bench of Justices Siddharth Mridul and Rajnish Bhatnagar said that being a special bench it does not assemble on a regular basis and therefore it has to take a call on whether these bail pleas can be heard by it or if they have to be sent to the designated bench for such casesWe are posting all of them for 215 pm on Monday We will have to take a call This is likely to take a long time We will have to take a call whether we can devote some time every day in the post lunch session the bench saidIt observed that the cases were not part heard before it and were only tagged along with the bail plea by coaccused Umar KhalidWe dont seem to have heard any of these appeals Arguments are yet to begin They are just tagged along Justice Mridul saidAlso read Maharashtra logs 119 Covid19 cases one deathBesides Khalid the bail pleas of Shifa Ur Rehman Saleem Khan Meeran Haider Gulfisha Fatima and Salim Malik were listed before the courtDelhi Polices challenge to the trial court order granting bail granted to former Congress councillor Ishrat Jahan in the case was also listed before the benchUnited Against Hate founder Khalid Saifi Sharjeel Imam Umar Khalid and several others have been booked under the antiterror law Unlawful Activities Prevention Act UAPA and provisions of the Indian Penal Code for allegedly being the masterminds of the February 2020 riots which left 53 people dead and over 700 injuredThe violence had erupted during the protests against CAA and NRCOn October 18 the bench had refused to grant bail to Umar Khalid in the case saying he was in constant touch with other coaccused and allegations against him were prima facie trueThe court had also said the acts of the accused prima facie qualified as terrorist act under the antiterror law UAPA and the antiCAA protests metamorphosed into violent riots which prima facie seemed to be orchestrated at the conspiratorial meetings and the statements of the witnesses indicate Umar Khalids active involvement in the protestsOn October 28 the court had listed bail plea by JNU student Sharjeel Imam for hearing on December 16 after he urged that the case be deferred by six weeksHe had said that he was seeking further legal advice following the courts observations pertaining to him while denying bail to coaccused Umar KhalidThe court had observed in Umar Khalids order that Sharjeel Imam arguably was at the head of the conspiracy and there existed a string of commonality running amongst all the coaccusedThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever