Delhi riots ‘planned conspiracy’ to divide country on religion, police tells HC

The court reserved verdicts in bail pleas of student activists Gulfisha Fatima, Sharjeel Imam, Umar Khalid, and United Against Hate (UAH) founder Khalid Saifi

New Delhi

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, representing the police, urged a bench of justices Navin Chawla and Renu Bhatnagar to not treat the case as a case of “mere riots” but as one where the accused had conspired with an intention to cause communal divide. (Representative photo)

The 2020 riots in northeast Delhi were not “spontaneous” but a “well planned”, “well orchestrated”, “well thought of conspiracy”, carried out on a particular date, time and place to achieve the sinister goal of dividing the country on religious lines and embarrassing India globally, the Delhi Police told the Delhi high court on Wednesday.

Even as the court reserved verdicts in bail pleas of student activists Gulfisha Fatima, Sharjeel Imam, Umar Khalid, and United Against Hate (UAH) founder Khalid Saifi, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, representing the police, urged a bench of justices Navin Chawla and Shailender Kaur to not treat the case as a case of “mere riots” but as one where the accused had conspired with an intention to cause communal divide, destabilise India’s unity, and law and order.

“One of the intentions was to globally defame our nation by choosing a particular date for more rioting, arson. It’s not a spontaneous riot. This is a case where riots were pre-planned, well orchestrated, organised with the view to achieve the sinister goal of dividing the country on religious lines. The intention was to cause a global embarrassment at global level since the same were committed on a day when the United States of America Donald Trump had to visit the Capital,” Mehta said.

“There was a clear unambiguous intention by putting the entire nation in the same, when the president of one of the countries had to visit. The intention was to ensure that the same is taken note by the global media and the country is defamed. Riots in the Capital of the country where 100 police personnel and other individuals were injured, one police personnel lost his life...” he said.

Violence erupted in northeast Delhi on February 23, 2020, as clashes between Hindus and Muslims over the then-proposed Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) snowballed into riots that left 53 dead and hundreds injured.

The accused, including student activists, were booked under the stringent Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), and they approached the high court after being denied bail by a lower court.

The students argued that they had already spent more than four years in custody and that the trial’s slow pace made prolonged incarceration unjustifiable. They also asserted that they were entitled to be released on bail on the grounds of parity with co-accused Natasha Narwal, Devangana Kalita and Asif Iqbal Tanha, who were granted bail by the high court in 2021.

During Wednesday’s hearing, Mehta said that prolonged incarceration could not be a ground for release on bail, in a case where the accused intended to cause violence in the Capital and break the country into two parts.

“It’s not a riot case where someone can get bail for prolonged incarceration. Prolonged incarceration is held in some cases to be ground enough per se for grant of bail but in the matter of this nature, where the Capital bleeds violence and the country breaks into two parts, the same is not applicable. If you’re doing something against the nation, you better be in jail until you are acquitted or convicted,” Mehta said.

He commended the Delhi Police for “one of the finest investigations” in recording statements of 58 witnesses.

A bench of justices Subramonium Prasad and Harish Vaidyanathan Shankar also reserved verdict in a plea filed by one of the co-accused, Tasleem Ahmad, seeking bail in the same case.