Delhi riots: Court orders police to supply copy of charge sheet to Umar Khalid
During an urgent hearing on Saturday, Khalid’s lawyer, Trideep Pais, told additional sessions judge Amitabh Rawat that he sought a soft copy of the charge sheet even though the earlier date for supplying charge sheet to the arrested persons was December 2.
A Delhi court on Saturday directed the Delhi Police to supply the copy of supplementary charge sheet to former JNU student Umar Khalid after he moved an application, stating that he does not even have the copy of the document to defend himself. Khalid, in his plea, said there was a vicious media campaign against him through stories purportedly quoting him from the police’s charge sheet.
During an urgent hearing on Saturday, Khalid’s lawyer, Trideep Pais, told additional sessions judge Amitabh Rawat that he sought a soft copy of the charge sheet even though the earlier date for supplying charge sheet to the arrested persons was December 2.
During the hearing, Pais told the court that the media was already reporting the contents of the charge sheet when he does not have a copy of it.
During the hearing, special public prosecutor Amit Prasad, appearing for the police, denied the allegations raised by Khalid.. He said that they do not have any problem in supplying a soft copy of the charge sheet.
The court said that it would not go into the allegations and counter allegations and directed that the charge sheet be supplied in a pen drive.
Khalid, JNU student Sharjeel Imam and Faizan Khan have been charge sheeted for the offences under Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and various sections of the Indian Penal Code, including murder, rioting, unlawful assembly, sedition, criminal conspiracy in connection to the north east Delhi riots.
On November 24, the court while taking cognisance of the supplementary charge sheet, had also directed the police to supply the charge sheets to all the accused on December 2.
The Delhi police had filed a 1000-page supplementary charge sheet against the three accused. Prior to this, the Special Cell had also filed 17,500 pages charge sheet against 15 accused including AAP councilor Tahir Hussain, former Cong councilor Ishrat Jahan, Pinjra tod members-Natasha Narwal and Devangana Kalita, and other student activists for hatching a conspiracy to orchestrate the riots.
Communal violence had broken out in northeast Delhi in February 2020 after initial clashes between citizenship law supporters and protesters went out of control and resulted in clashes between Hindus and Muslims. The riots left at least 53 people dead and around 400 injured.