The Delhi Police on Wednesday appealed to the Supreme Court against the grant of bail to student activists Devangana Kalita, Natasha Narwal and Asif Iqbal Tanha, who were booked under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) in connection with the Delhi riots that broke out last year after protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) turned violent.
The overnight move to approach the top court came after the Delhi High Court made particularly sharp observations in its order, accusing the government of blurring the line between rightful dissent and terrorism.
The police had arrested JNU students and Pinjra Tod members Ms. Narwal and Ms. Kalita last year. Mr. Tanha, a Jamia Milia student, was also taken into custody about the same time in May 2020.
The trial court had denied them bail, following which they moved the High Court successfully. Ms. Narwal was recently given parole to perform the last rites of her father, who died of COVID-19.
“It appears that in its anxiety to suppress dissent and in the morbid fear that matters may get out of hand, the State has blurred the line between the constitutionally guaranteed ‘right to protest’ and ‘terrorist activity’,” a Bench of Justices Siddharth Mridul and Anup J. Bhambhani of the High Court said in a scathing order, releasing the three students on bail.
Democracy would be in peril if the lines were smudged. Phrase ‘terrorist act’ could not be permitted to be applied in a cavalier manner to conventional offences, it stated.
“Having given our anxious consideration to this aspect of ‘likelihood’ of threat and terror, we are of the view that the foundations of our nation stand on surer footing than to be likely shaken by a protest, however vicious, organised by a tribe of college students or other persons, operating as a coordination committee from the confines of a University situated in the heart of Delhi,” it observed.