Not a single witness statement attracts terror charge: Umar Khalid

NOT A single statement by witnesses relied upon by the prosecution attracts a terrorism charge against me, argued Umar Khalid on Wednesday before a Delhi court during his bail arguments in the 2020 Northeast Delhi riots ‘larger conspiracy’ case.

“The accused has not committed any terrorist act... there is not a single seizure from him,” said Advocate Trideep Pais, representing Khalid, before the Court of Additional Sessions Judge Sameer Bajpai.

Khalid, who was booked under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) for his alleged involvement in the case, had earlier told the Delhi court that other accused facing graver allegations than him were out on bail as well as people allegedly involved in similar activities were not even made an accused by the Delhi Police.

In February, Khalid had withdrawn his bail plea from the Supreme Court.

Relying on judgments, Pais said that the Delhi court should analyse each of the documents in the chargesheet. “If 10 witnesses state my (Khalid) name, does that make a terror case against me?” Pais asked the court.

He further said that courts which earlier denied him bail had considered enough what was stated in the chargesheet, without distinguishing between the acts or the persons. “The High Court and the Special Court (which denied Khalid bail) have not distinguished between the acts or persons. They have just painted everything with a broad brush,” said Pais.

Pais said the case must be assessed by looking into material against each individual, and “the documents the prosecution relies upon are statements of a witness and a CDR”. The CDR showed that Khalid was not at the alleged meeting,

Umar Khalid

which the prosecution had mentioned. “On whimsical statements, sometimes even without witnesses, an act of terror is being foisted towards Khalid.”

Pais also said that one of the witnesses in the case did not say anything about the accused, but then “miraculously” named him two weeks later. “All the witnesses seem to have some problem with memory,” said Pais, adding that merely “frivolously reading out the chargesheet” cannot be relied on by the prosecution to deny the accused a bail. “Mere meeting of accused individuals also does not imply terrorism,” Pais added.

On Tuesday, special public prosecutor Amit Prasad had alleged that links from different news outlets were shared to “expose the Delhi Police”, and Khalid had requested several actors to “amplify” the links. He had further said that certain hashtags were shared with many influential people, asking them to retweet the same. Khalid’s Whatsapp chats also revealed that he has a habit of creating social media narratives to influence bail hearings, Prasad submitted before the court.

Prasad also referred to various tweets by persons such as civil rights activist and journalist Teesta Setalvad, journalist and author Aakar Patel, and human rights group Amnesty International while submitting how Khalid amplified his narrative as part of a conspiracy. “While he claims that he was subjected to a media trial, it is he (Khalid) who was playing around with the media through people connected to him,” said Prasad.

The next bail hearing has now been kept for April 24.