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Informist, Monday, Sept. 22, 2025

NEW DELHI – The Supreme Court Monday issued notice to Delhi Police on Sharjeel Imam, Umar Khalid, and others' bail petitions in connection with the 2020 Delhi riots conspiracy case. On Sept. 2, a division bench of Justice Navin Chawla and Justice Shalinder Kaur of the Delhi High Court had denied them bail.

In February 2020, northeast Delhi, where a protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act, passed in 2019, was under way for several months, erupted in violence that left 53 dead and hundreds injured. Following the violence between Feb. 23 and Feb. 25, the Delhi Police arrested several student activists, alleging their involvement in a conspiracy to incite the riots. They were charged under multiple laws, including the Indian Penal Code, the Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act, 1984, the Arms Act, 1959, and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967.

The petitioners had argued that they have already spent nearly five years in custody and the slow pace of the trial makes prolonged incarceration unjustifiable. They said they were entitled to be released on bail on grounds of parity with co-accused Natasha Narwal, Devangana Kalita, and Asif Iqbal Tanha, who were granted bail by the court in 2021.

Solicitor General of India Tushar Mehta and Special Public Prosecutor Amit Prasad, appearing for the Delhi Police, had opposed the bail plea in the high court and argued the riots were not spontaneous but a planned and orchestrated conspiracy carried out on a particular date at a particular time and place to divide the country on religious lines and embarrass it globally. They had requested the court not to treat the case as one of mere riots but as one where the accused had conspired to cause a communal divide, destabilise India's unity, and disrupt law and order. They said prolonged incarceration could not be grounds for release on bail in such a case.  End

Reported by Surya Tripathi

Edited by Subhojit Sarkar

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