New Delhi: The Delhi high court on March 24 granted a passover in a hearing for Jawaharlal Nehru University scholar Sharjeel Imam’s plea for bail after the prosecution said that Special Public Prosecutor Amit Prasad was unavailable.
Imam had sought bail in the case relating to speeches that he gave at the Aligarh Muslim University and in the Jamia Millia Islamia university area against the Citizenship Amendment Act.
The Delhi police had held that the speeches were inflammatory.
The hearing today was to have taken place in front of a division bench comprising of Justice Siddharth Mridul and Justice Rajnish Bhatnagar, LiveLaw reported. The court had earlier issued to notice to the Delhi police asking as to why bail should not be given in the case.
The Allahabad high court in November 28, 2021, had granted Imam bail for a speech at Aligarh Muslim University in 2019.
In October, a Delhi court had denied bail to Imam for the same speech, observing that the “tone and tenor of the incendiary speech tend to have a debilitating effect upon public tranquility, peace and harmony of the society”.
On Tuesday, March 22, a Delhi court deferred the order on Imam’s bail application in the ‘larger conspiracy’ case on the 2020 northeast Delhi riots for March 26.
Besides Imam, scholar Umar Khalid, activist Khalid Saifi, JNU students Natasha Narwal and Devangana Kalita, Jamia Coordination Committee members Safoora Zargar, former AAP councillor Tahir Hussain and several others – most Muslims – have also been booked under the stringent law in the case.
On the same day when prosecution sought and was granted passover for Imam’s bail hearing, a Delhi court refused to grant bail to Umar Khalid after deferring the order three times.
This article first appeared on thewire.in
