SC directs Delhi HC to consider Sharjeel Imam’s plea to expedite bail hearing in 2020 Delhi riots case

The Supreme Court on Oct 25 asked the Delhi High Court to consider student activist Sharjeel Imam’s plea to expedite his bail hearing in the 2020 northeast Delhi riots larger conspiracy case.

A bench of Justices Bela M Trivedi and Satish Chandra Sharma said that Imam “shall be at liberty to request the High Court to hear the bail application as expeditiously as possible on the next date and it is expected that the High Court shall consider the said request”.

The court was hearing Imam’s writ petition seeking bail in the case. The bench, however, refused to entertain the writ directly filed before it while allowing the petitioner to ask the high court to consider his request to expedite the hearing.

As the bench sought to dismiss it initially, senior advocate Siddharth Dave appearing for Imam said that he was not pressing for bail but only wanted the high court to take it up without further delay. Dave pointed out that it had been pending in the High Court since April 2022.

Imam had approached the High Court after the trial court denied him bail. He and many others were booked under relevant provisions of the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and the Indian Penal Code (IPC) for allegedly being the “masterminds” of the riots in northeast Delhi in February 2020.

On May 29 this year, the Delhi High Court granted Imam statutory bail in the sedition case filed against him over alleged inflammatory speeches at Aligarh Muslim University and in the Jamia area during the anti-CAA protests.
The High Court is due to hear his plea on Nov 25.

On February 23, 2020, riots broke out in northeast Delhi between the Anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and pro-CAA protestors. The violence took a communal turn and led to the death of over 53 people over the next 10 days.

Over 200 were also injured in the violence. Shops and houses were burnt down and even places of worship were attacked.

Earlier protests started in Delhi and other parts of the country in December 2019 in response to the passage of the Citizenship Bill, which paved the way for the grant of citizenship to Hindus, Sikhs, Parsis, Jains, Buddhists, and Christians who took refuge in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan in or before December 2014.