Northeast Delhi violence: Sharjeel Imam moves HC challenging trial court over bail denial

Sharjeel Imam, the accused in a larger conspiracy case into the Northeast Delhi Violence, moved an appeal in the High Court challenging the trial court order denying bail to him.

The appeal has been listed for hearing on Friday before the bench of Justice Siddharth Mridul and Justice Rajnish Bhatnagar.

The appeal challenges the order passed by the Special Court of Additional Sessions Judge Amitabh Rawat on April 11, 2022.

The appeal filed through Advocate Ahmed Ibrahim has stated that the Special Court has failed to appreciate that the entire investigation is faulty and the charge sheet attributes events to the speeches of the Appellant to incidents of violence that are not connected in any direct or indirect way to the appellant even as per the material relied upon in the charge sheet.

It is also stated that at the time, when the violence broke out in Northeast Delhi, the appellant was already in custody in two other FIRs registered at Crime Branch and New Friend Colony and no overt act or covert act at this time period can possibly be attributed to the appellant in the manner sought to be done by the investigation agency.

The appeal said that the overt acts attributed to the appellant do not attract any criminality, much less the provisions of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) and Sedition. There is no prima facie case against the appellant for commission of ' terrorist act' for denying the bail under section 43 (D) of UAPA.

All the overt acts attributed to the appellant including all the speeches and the pamphlets allegedly drafted by the appellant has already been investigated and the Special Court has already framed charges against him under section 13 UAPA and 124A, 153A, 153B and 505(2) IPC in case FIR no. 22/2022 of Crime Branch and the trial has begun.

A Delhi court on April 11, 2022, had refused to grant bail to Sharjeel observing that there are reasonable grounds for believing that the accusation against the accused is prima facie true.

It is alleged that Sharjeel Imam was the first person to act after passing the resolution by the Cabinet Committee to present the Citizen Amendment Bill (CAB) in both houses of Parliament on 4 December 2019 and Muslim Students of JNU (MSJ) was formed over the next days and propagated the idea of disruptive chakka jam.

Opposing the bail plea Special Public Prosecutor (SPP) Amit Prasad referred to the statement of Romeo that on 15 December 2019 the protest against CAA/NRC was started at Shaheen Bagh by Sharjeel Imam, Sarjil Usmani, Amanatullah and others. The said protest was organized from Al - Habibi Masjid. They used to give provocative speeches. They provoked people to come out of their houses and to do chakka jam at different places to pressurise the government. Sharjeel Imam had said that numerous Shaheen Bagh have to be created in the country.

This case is connected with the Northeast Delhi violence that broke out in February 2020. In this violence, 53 people died and hundreds were injured. Sharjeel Imam, Umar Khalid and others were arrested for the alleged larger conspiracy of riots.

( With inputs from ANI )