Umar Khalid’s counsel argued that the charges levelled against him were borne out of malice and the fertile imagination of police.

NEW DELHI — A Delhi court on Thursday rejected  the bail plea of former JNU student and anti-CAA activist Umar Khalid in a case related to the alleged “larger conspiracy” behind the Delhi riots.

He is languishing in jail facing charges under UAPA ever since he was arrested on September 14, 2020.

The court has been hearing arguments over Khalid’s bail application for the past eight months, according to Live Law.

Additional Sessions Judge Amitabh Rawat had deferred the pronouncement of its verdict for the third time on Wednesday and was posted for Thursday, stating that it was ‘under correction’.

The order, which was to be originally pronounced on March 14, had been listed for March 21. But the court deferred it following the filing of written notes by the prosecution and posted for March 23 (Wednesday).

Opposing the bail plea, Special Public Prosecutor (SPP) Amit Prasad argued on the relevance of the speech given by Umar Khalid in Amravati in February 2020. He said the bail application was rejected on February 11, pointing out that the announcement of Donald Trump visiting India came on the same day.

The police accused Khalid of aiming to defame the government in front of the international media under the cover of protests against the citizenship amendment act or CAA. They presented a clip of his speech claiming he was exhorting the crowd against the government. However, his lawyer demonstrated before the court that the police had made the case against Khalid on the basis of a truncated clip shared by BJP IT cell head Amit Malviya.

During the course of the hearing, Khalid’s counsel, opposing the charges under the Indian Penal Code and UAPA, termed the chargesheet a “work of fiction”. He argued that the speech given by Khalid was about Gandhi, harmony, and the Constitution, and it was not a crime. After the submissions, the court had reserved the order.

The counsel invoked Harry Potter’s Voldemort and Family man and Trail of Chicago web series to build the case for his innocence arguing that the charges were borne out of malice and the fertile imagination of police.

In February 2020 Delhi witnessed targeted and organised violence against Muslims. The violence in the north eastern part of New Delhi led to the death of around 53 people, mostly Muslims and more than 700 people were injured. Many mosques were burnt and destroyed, and Muslim houses and shops were looted and burnt.