School principal arrested in Delhi violence case gets bail

nNEW DELHI: A Delhi court on Saturday granted bail to Faisal Farooq, principal of Rajdhani Public School, who was earlier charged with hatching a conspiracy to precipitate and aggravate riots in and around his school. The court observed that the CCTV footage did not show his presence at the place where the riots had broken out.

Duty Judge Vinod Yadav said that the statement of one of the witnesses, Roop Singh, on March 8 had claimed that he had seen Farooq on the spot . He had also claimed to have heard Farooq asking the school guard to permit some persons inside the school.

However, later in his statement recorded before the magistrate on March 11, he did not say a word about having seen the accused or having heard him speak to the guard.

The court, while granting bail, said, “It is clearly apparent that there are contradictions in the various statements of this witness about applicant,” the court said. It also noted that Farooq kept calling the police to report the damage to his school from February 24, but his FIR was recorded on March 5. The court said “except bald allegation,” there is nothing to substantiate that Farooq had spoken to people connected with the riots.

Despite HT’S many calls and test messages, there was no response from police crime branch chief Praveer Ranjan or police spokesperson Mandeep Randhawa. Confirming the order, Farooq’s lawyer Gaurav Kochar said he had contended that there was no material on record about the presence of the applicant at the spot at the time of riots. He said the 11-day delay in filing of the FIR also pointed towards false implication.