Activist Gulfisha Fatima has moved the Supreme Court against a Delhi High Court order rejecting her bail petition in a case in which she has been accused of being part of a “larger conspiracy” linked to the 2020 Delhi riots, Live Law reported on Sunday.

On Saturday, former Jawaharlal Nehru University student Sharjeel Imam also moved the top court against the order.

On September 2, a bench of Justices Navin Chawla and Shalinder Kaur dismissed the bail petitions of Fatima, Imam, Umar Khalid, Mohd Saleem Khan, Shifa Ur Rehman, Athar Khan, Meeran Haider and Abdul Khalid Saifi.

Another division bench of Justices Subramonium Prasad and Harish Vaidyanathan Shankar rejected the bail petition of another accused person, Tasleem Ahmed.

The nine accused persons have been in jail for more than five years.

The violence in 2020 had left 53 dead and hundreds injured. Most of those killed were Muslims.

The Delhi Police have claimed that the violence was part of a larger conspiracy to defame Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government and was planned by those who organised the protests against the amended Citizenship Act.

While dismissing Fatima’s bail applications on September 2, the High Court noted that the activist had created two WhatsApp groups in December 2019 to mobilise women. It said that one of these groups revolved around coordination during the protests and ensuring that women participated in it.

“This factum of creation of these two groups cannot be seen in isolation, the consideration should weigh in on broad probabilities as per the settled law,” Chawla and Kaur said in their order.

The High Court noted that Fatima had also argued for parity with the other co-accused in the case – student activists Asif Iqbal Tanha, Devangana Kalita, and Natasha Narwal – who were granted bail in June 2021.

“We may note that in a case of conspiracy, it is not necessary that all the accused persons must be involved in all facets of the criminality,” the bench added. “Participation in one group or the other, and the connectivity of the appellant with the co-accused persons, including Shadab Ahmad, Umar Khalid etc, are factors to be considered.”

Fatima and the other accused persons had sought bail primarily on the grounds that the trial has been delayed.

Fatima argued that while she was part of lawful protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act, she did not take part in the alleged conspiracy to spark violence in Delhi, PTI reported. Her lawyer said that although a witness claimed that she told protestors to collect red chilli powder and glass bottles, there was no evidence of any such items being recovered or being used during the protests.

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