Published on: August 23, 2021, at 19:05 IST
The court was hearing Khalid’s bail application concerning an FIR filed under the provisions of UAPA [ Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act] in the Delhi riots conspiracy case.
On Monday activist Umar Khalid argued before a Delhi court that the police relied on a shear video clip tweeted by a Bharatiya Janata Party leader and aired by news channels for its FIR against him.
“Certainly the Delhi police had nothing except Republic TV and News18,” Senior Advocate Trideep Pais, present for Khalid, said.
Pais said that he wrote to News18 and Republic TV searching the crude footage of the speech they had aired on the channels. In response, News18 said that it did not have the crude footage and was taken from a tweet of a Bharatiya Janata Party leader.
Between February 23 and February 26 2020 in North East Delhi, a brawl between the supporters of the Citizenship Amendment Act and those opposing it broken out, allege 53 lives and injuring hundreds. The police were accused of either inertia or collaboration in some instances of violence, mostly in Muslim neighborhoods.
Khalid was arrested under the ironclad UAPA in September in a case connecting to a larger conspiracy in the Delhi violence. The Delhi Police had on November 22 filed a charge sheet against Khalid and student activists Sharjeel Imam and Faizan Khan in the case.