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New Delhi: The Delhi high court on Wednesday asked the police to reply on a plea by JNU scholar Sharjeel Imam, challenging a trial court order by which his bail plea was dismissed.
Imam arrested in a sedition case for delivering what police called an “inflammatory speech” during the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protests in 2019.
Justice Rajnish Bhatnagar issued notice to the prosecution and asked it to file a reply to the bail plea while listing the matter for further hearing on February 11 next year.
Imam is represented by senior advocate Sanjay R. Hegde.
Imam, 32, submitted that all the co-accused, who were arrested for allegedly causing the violence, have been granted bail in the case while he was still incarcerated for over 20 months now.
“Even after admitting that the evidence relied upon by the prosecution is sketchy’ and all the co-accused… having been enlarged on bail, the applicant was not granted bail by the (trial) court,” the plea said.
It said Imam has not been named in the FIR and has no connection to any of the events mentioned in the FIR and alleged that he had been arrested by the investigating agency as part of a targeted campaign to have multiple FIRs and investigations against him at the same time.
“Till date the prosecution has not been able to furnish the requisite sanction mandated under Section 196 CrPC to prosecute the applicant (Imam) for the offences punishable under Section 124A (sedition) of IPC in the present FIR,” the plea said.
According to the prosecution, on December 13, 2019, Imam had allegedly delivered a “provocative speech” which resulted in riots two days later in the Jamia Nagar area in south Delhi.
The trial court had said that a cursory and plain reading of the speech showed it was “clearly on communal lines.”
Another case
In connection with another sedition case in which he has also been charged under the UAPA, Imam told a Delhi court on Wednesday that there was nothing in his speech that caused religious animosity.
Additional Sessions Judge Amitabh Rawat was hearing a case filed against Imam for the alleged speeches given by him at two universities in 2019, where he allegedly threatened a chakka jam to cut off Assam and the rest of the Northeast from India.
During the proceedings, counsel for Imam, represented by Tanveer Ahmed Mir, said, “From the impugned speech, there is nothing which per se causes any kind of religious animosity. We cannot lose sight of the context. What Sharjeel Imam says, in relation to CAA-NRC, is that in much as it affects one community directly, what kind of support is to be elicited from the majority community.”
Mir added, “If a person is to say in regard to a government policy which directly affects a community ‘A’ that people of other community ‘B’ should stand with them otherwise they are not supporting you, then we cannot say that that part of the speech promotes animosity between two communities.”
He also apprised the judge about the recent Allahabad High Court order granting bail to Imam in a sedition case registered against him for a speech he made at Aligarh Muslim University in January 2020.
Following this, ASJ Rawat reserved for December 7 the order on his applications seeking bail and discharge and directed Special Public Prosecutor Amit Prasad to file detailed written submissions on behalf of the state.
(With PTI inputs)