'Files Received at 2:30 in the Night': SC Adjourns Bail Hearing of Umar Khalid, Others Till Sept 19
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday (September 12) adjourned the hearing of the petitions filed by Umar Khalid, Sharjeel Imam, Meeran Haider and Gulfisha Fatima seeking bail in the Delhi riots larger conspiracy case till September 19.
On Friday, the matter was listed before a bench comprising Justices Aravind Kumar and N.V. Anjaria. Thereafter, Justice Kumar expressed difficulty about taking up these matters on Friday, saying that the files of the supplementary list were received only at 2.30 in the night, reported LiveLaw.
The petitions will now be heard on September 19.
On September 2, the Delhi high court had dismissed the bail appeals of nine people including Khalid, Imam, Haider and Fatima. A division bench of Justice Naveen Chawla and Justice Shalinder Kaur dismissed all appeals.
The other petitioners in the appeal that was dismissed included Athar Khan, Khalid Saifi, Mohammad Saleem Khan, Shifa ur Rehman, and Shadab Ahmed. All the accused had been arrested in the first nine months of 2020.
The activists had appealed against the rejection of their bail by trial courts.
These activists’ time in jail have been marked by multiple appeals and subsequent postponements and rejections by courts, in what rights defenders worldwide have decried as a travesty of justice.
On the same day, a separate bench of the Delhi high court, comprising Justice Subramonium Prasad and Justice Harish Vaidyanathan Shankar also denied bail to co-accused Tasleem Ahmed.
The highly controversial FIR 59/2020 was registered by Delhi Police’s Special Cell under various offences under the Indian Penal Code and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. Questions continue to hover over the Delhi police’s partisan role in investigating the violence.
Much of the Delhi police’s case rests on activists’ presence or participation in WhatsApp groups during the time of the nationwide Citizenship Amendment Act.
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