The student activist says during bail hearing that Delhi Police has given communal narrative to protests against CAA
Team Clarion
NEW DELHI — Student activist Umar Khalid has once again challenged the Delhi Police before a Delhi court saying the entire charge-sheet filed by them in FIR 59/2020 reads like a script of Amazon Prime show ‘Family Man’, having no evidence to support the allegations.
On a previous hearing for bail on August 23, Khalid said that the police have no evidence against him except the video clips run by Republic TV and News 18 showing a trimmed version of his speech.
On Friday, his lawyer Senior Advocate Trideep Pais argued before Additional Sessions Judge Amitabh Rawat that the chargesheet makes rhetorical allegations against Khalid, terming him the “veteran of sedition” without any factual basis. The hyperbolic allegations in the chargesheet “reads like a 9 PM new script of one of those shouting news-channels” and are reflective of the “fertile imagination” of the investigating officer, the lawyer argued, reports Live Law.
Pais was arguing for Khalid’s bail in the Delhi riots larger conspiracy case involving charges under UAPA. The lawyer submitted that the police have attempted to give a communal narrative to the protests organised by Khalid against the Citizenship Amendment Act. “Please understand, he’s not writing the script of Family Man. He is writing a chargesheet,” said Pais.
He added: “This is the kind of stuff which is read and peddled, the creation of public opinion in order to substitute the lack of evidence to carry out your objective of unfairly prosecuting people when you have no material to do so.”
According to Live Law, Pais started by submitting that the chargesheet conclusively showed that there was no crime on the date the complaint was filed. He also said that the prosecution’s case relies on a clip from a news agency, which did not even have the full video of the speech alleged to be seditious.
On the last hearing on August 23, Pais, Khalid’s lawyer, had argued that the Delhi Police’s case was based on truncated clips of Khalid’s speech given at Amaravati telecast by Republic TV and News18, which were in turn based on an edited video tweeted by BJP leader IT Cell head Amit Malviya.
There is nothing in that speech which is leading to lawless action, sedition, hatred or any illegality of any sort. Having said that, by the time they took the trouble of going to Amravati and take the speech, they made 18 arrests,” Pais submitted.
Coming on the aspect of there being inconsistent statements given by witnesses, Pais submitted that a protected witness gave contrary statements in the two FIRs registered against Umar Khalid including FIR 59/2020 and FIR 101/2020.
“He makes two statements in each FIR. On 21 May, 2020, he is unaware of January 2020. But on July 29, he not only speaks of it but he says he goes inside the PFI office. Then he makes a statement before a Magistrate that he didn’t go inside. Then he comes back and makes a statement that he was waiting outside,” Pais said.
Arguing that such statements are inconsistent in order to meet the test under UAPA, Pais submitted that three people meeting and going inside an office is not a conspiracy. “This is a flavour of the kind of statements your honour will see. It is tailor made to suit the situation,” he submitted.
