Umar Khalid seeks bail based on time spent in jail, lack of prima facie case

There have been 751 FIRs registered for the violence in Delhi after the CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act) was announced. Khalid is an accused in FIR 59 for a conspiracy to engineer the riots. His counsel pointed out that one of the witnesses (Sierra) had claimed that acid pouches had been hurled, but in none of the FIRs did the police mention any recovery of these pouches, acid injuries, or burns.

The lawyer also highlighted that this was the strongest statement against Khalid, but it also had no proof to back it up. He cited the case of Vernon Gonsalves, where the Supreme Court had stated that “no material has been demonstrated by the NIA (National Investigation Agency) before us that the appellants are members of the terrorist organisation”. Pais said Khalid’s case was similar as there was no material to back the terror claim against him.

The prosecution has claimed that Khalid was a “silent whisper”, but all of this is from the “fertile imagination of the chargesheet writer”, Pais said. He said the prosecution mentioned Khalid’s messages in one of the WhatsApp groups (DPSG) in the chargesheet to allege a conspiracy, where Khalid had sent just five messages, of which one was a forwarded message from a police officer regarding the protest, asking them to de-escalate.

From both the WhatsApp group and the meeting, only a few have been named as accused. Neither those who opened the group, nor those who made the most number of arguments, were accused by the police, said Pais, adding that participation in a meeting was not illegal, and the contents of the meeting were unknown to the prosecution.