The Delhi High Court is set to hear the bail application of Umar Khalid, the former Jawaharlal Nehru University student, on Monday, concerning his alleged involvement in the Delhi riots of February 2020. The riots, a violent fallout from protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC), resulted in the deaths of 53 people and injuries to over 700 others.
The bench, consisting of Justices Navin Chawla and Shalinder Kaur, will also consider the bail pleas of other co-accused, including Sharjeel Imam, Gulfisha Fatima, and Khalid Saifi, the founder of ‘United Against Hate’. These hearings come after a change in the judicial bench due to the transfer of Justice Suresh Kumar Kait to the Madhya Pradesh High Court as Chief Justice.
Khalid, Imam, and others face charges under the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), accused of orchestrating the riots. Khalid was arrested in September 2020 and has made multiple unsuccessful attempts to secure bail. His latest effort challenges the trial court’s decision from May 28, which denied him regular bail for the second time, following an initial dismissal that the court stated had attained finality.
In previous rulings, notably on October 18, 2022, the High Court upheld the rejection of Khalid’s first bail application. The court found the allegations made by the city police against him to have prima facie credibility, indicating that the anti-CAA protests had escalated into orchestrated riots. Witness accounts have suggested Khalid’s active participation in planning the protests, which were allegedly aimed at instigating communal violence in strategically chosen areas of the capital.
