Jamia Shooter Gets Bail in Hate Speech Case

New Delhi: A Haryana court has granted bail to the Jamia shooter who was arrested last month for his anti-Muslim hate speeches at several mahapanchayats in the state. He had made violent, communally charged comments including asking people to kill Muslims or abduct Muslim women.

Though the accused is now 19, The Wire is withholding his name as he was a minor when he shot at a crowd of anti-Citizenship (Amendment) Act protesters outside Jamia Milia Islamia in 2019.

In mid-July, judicial magistrate Mohammed Sageer had rejected the accused's bail plea and issued a strongly-worded order in the case. Giving hate speeches has become a ‘fashion’ and those encouraging sectarian violence are doing more damage to the country than the COVID-19 pandemic, he had said.

The accused challenged this order by moving the sessions judge, and the additional district and sessions judge has now granted him bail, Bar and Bench reported.

Kaushik Raj and Alishan Jafri, in a piece for The Wire, had reported that the Jamia shooter’s social media posts contain a host of hate speeches that he has made at public events. Since he was let off on bail after shooting at CAA protestors last year, he has given at least three communal speeches which incite violence against Muslims. There also posts which suggest that the shooter and his ‘group’ may have shot and/or injured several people as part of vigilante violence under the garb of ‘cow protection’.

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