SC asks police to consider bail for Delhi riots conspiracy case accused

THe sublime margaret court on mon asked the new delhi law to consider whether the accused in the 2020 riots larger conspiracy case could be released on bail, pointing out that most of them have already spent nearly five years in custody.“See if you can, Mr Raju...if something can be done...This is only about the consideration of bail. See, five years are over already,” a bench of Justices Aravind Kumar and NV Anjaria told Additional Solicitor General (ASG) SV Raju, who appeared for the police.The bench made the observation while refusing to grant more time to the police to file counter-affidavits to the bail petitions filed by student activists Umar Khalid, Sharjeel Imam, Meeran Haider, Gulfisha Fatima, and Shifa-ur-Rehman. The court directed the police to submit their reply by this week and listed the matter for hearing on Friday (October 31).Declining the request of Raju, who sought two weeks to file the counter, the bench said enough time had already been granted. “We have given you enough time. You may be appearing for the first time. Last time we said issue notice and we said in that open court that we will hear this matter on October 27 and dispose of it,” it told the law officer.When Raju pressed for two weeks to file the affidavit, the court asked, “What is the question of a counter-affidavit in a bail matter?” Even as the ASG requested one week, the bench remained firm, directing instead that the matter be heard later this week.Significantly, the bench urged the Delhi Police to also “examine if you can think of coming out with something…”, an implicit nudge to consider granting bail on concession, especially in view of the long incarceration and delay in the trial.Senior advocates Kapil Sibal, Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Siddharth Dave, and Siddharth Agarwal, appearing for the accused, stressed that the petitioners had been behind bars for over four to five years, with the trial proceeding at a glacial pace. “The whole case is about the delay in the trial. There should not be further delay in the hearing,” Singhvi said.The court had earlier been unable to take up the matter twice. On September 12, the hearing was deferred as the voluminous case records reached the bench too late for examination. On September 19, Justice Manmohan, who was then part of the bench, recused himself, noting his past professional association with Sibal. The case was subsequently re-listed before the current bench of justices Kumar and Anjaria.The accused, Imam, Khalid, Fatima, Haider and Rehman, are among nine persons whose bail pleas were rejected by the Delhi High Court on September 2. The high court had described their roles in the alleged conspiracy as “prima facie grave”, holding that the evidence pointed to a coordinated plan behind the riots that left 53 people dead and hundreds injured in February 2020.The high court had observed that both Khalid and Imam were among the first to mobilise protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in December 2019 through speeches, pamphlets, and WhatsApp groups, which, according to investigators, later morphed into a conspiracy to trigger violence. It ruled that their absence from the actual riot sites did not exonerate them, as the alleged planning preceded the violence.The Delhi Police, represented by Solicitor General Tushar Mehta and special public prosecutor Amit Prasad, had termed them “intellectual architects” of the conspiracy. The accused have consistently maintained that they were exercising their constitutional right to protest and had no role in fomenting violence. They have argued that their prolonged incarceration amounts to punishment without trial, with multiple supplementary charge sheets filed and dozens of witnesses still to be examined.They have also sought parity with student activists Natasha Narwal, Devangana Kalita, and Asif Iqbal Tanha, who were granted bail by the Delhi High Court in 2021.Imam has been in custody since January 2020, while Khalid was arrested in September 2020. Other co-accused have spent comparable periods behind bars.