Khalid, whose cell phone was seized by the police, has refuted all allegations against him, and says he is being falsely implicated
Clarion India
NEW DELHI – The Special Cell of the Delhi Police on Friday interrogated former student of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) Umar Khalid over the February north-east Delhi riots.
Joint commissioner of police (special cell) Neeraj Thakur told Hindustan Times that Khalid was questioned by his team for three hours at the department’ office and that his cell phone was seized for investigation.
The Special Cell, which is probing “a larger conspiracy angle” behind the riots, quizzed Khalid for the first time for his alleged role in the violence that had left 53 dead and some 400 injured.
“Khalid was questioned regarding the purported provocative speeches he had allegedly delivered at two different places before the visit of US President Donald Trump in February. The JNU ex-student had allegedly appealed to the public to come out on streets and block the roads during Trump’s visit,” Hindustan Times quoted a police officer as saying.
Khalid has refuted the allegations against him and said he was being falsely implicated. “It is an upside-down world that we are living in, in which the organisations and individuals that have worked for communal harmony are being implicated,” he told The Hindu.
A t least eight people, including suspended Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) councillor Tahir Hussain, Jamia student Meeran Haider, Jamia Coordination Committee’s media coordinator Safoora Zargar, and Pinjra Tod activists Natasha Narwal and Devangana Kalita, have been arrested under the stringent UAPA on charges of planning and executing the north-east Delhi riots.
Counsels for the arrested persons have accused the Delhi Police of launching a witch-hunt against their clients, only because they were part of the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act.
According to the special cell submissions before the court, Khalid, along with other accused, had hatched a conspiracy to orchestrate the riots just before the Trump visit on February 24 and 25. In at least four charge-sheets, the police have said Khalid had met councillor Hussain and Khalid Saifi, an activist, on January 8 at the Shaheen Bagh sit-in protest site to allegedly plan the riots.
Khalid’s name had surfaced in the media for the first time in 2016 when he, along with the then president of JNU Students Union, Kanhaiya Kumar, and others, was accused of raising anti-India slogans during a university event. He and other students were arrested and charged with sedition. They had denied the charges and accused the police of using doctored videos to build a case against them.
The case is being heard by a Delhi court.
