New Delhi: After already having heard the bail applications of several accused booked in the 2020 Northeast Delhi riots “conspiracy” case at length, the Delhi High Court is set to rehear them beginning January next year. This comes after the judge hearing the applications was transferred.
Justice Siddharth Mridul, who was heading the division bench that was hearing the applications, has been elevated to the position of Chief Justice of the Manipur High Court. His name was recommended by the Supreme Court collegium on 6 July, and his appointment was notified by the central government last month, after which he took oath.
Over the last year, the bench comprising Justices Mridul and Rajnish Bhatnagar had heard these bail applications at length and had even reserved orders in at least five cases. The ones in which the bench had reserved orders include the bail petitions filed by Gulfisha Fatima, Meeran Haider, Abdul Khalid Saifi, Shifa Ur Rehman, and Mohd Saleem Khan. The first of these orders was reserved in January this year, the second in February, and another in March — records show that after 18 May, the bench didn’t assemble to hear the matter on at least four dates of hearing.
The bail petitions filed by Sharjeel Imam, Shadab Ahmed, and Athar Khan, and the Delhi Police’s appeal seeking the cancellation of bail to another accused, Ishrat Jahan, were also listed before a bench led by Justice Mridul.
Gulfisha Fatima, Meeran Haider, Shifa Ur Rehman, and Mohd Saleem Khan are known activists. Sharjeel Imam was a student leader at Jamia Millia Islamia .
All of them have been booked under FIR no. 59/2020, filed on 6 March 2020. This FIR claimed that the Northeast Delhi riots were a pre-planned conspiracy “hatched by JNU student Umar Khalid and his associates”. Now, a bench of Justices Suresh Kumar Kait and Shalinder Kaur will deal with the appeals.
Senior advocate Rebecca John said that “delay in hearing a bail matter, and this kind of delay, is unprecedented”, and that “something needs to be done to fast-forward it”.
“The Supreme Court has repeatedly said that bail hearings should not consume too much of the court’s time because you are not deciding a case on its merits at the final stage,” she told ThePrint. “You are looking at a very very preliminary stage. Ordinarily, bail hearings should not take so long.”
While John pointed out that voluminous records are filed in such cases, “nonetheless, for any bail matter to have been pending before a court for a year-and-a-half — by the time it’s heard in January and by the time an order is passed, one way or the other, it’ll be close to two years — I think it makes a mockery of the entire bail jurisprudence that we have in this country”.
Cases relating to personal liberty, she said, shouldn’t take so long. “Every litigant has a right to be told that his case has been heard, and an order has been passed, whichever way that order goes. I’m not saying that the order has to go in favor of the litigant, but the order must come so that he can then think of the next steps. If it’s going to take two years in the high court, then what is the point of it all?” she asked.
Also Read: ‘People call us rioters’ — a year after demolitions, fear & stigma still haunt Jahangirpuri’s lanes
Reserved orders
One of the accused in the case, Fatima was arrested in April 2020 — two months after the Delhi riots. The bench comprising Justices Mridul and Bhatnagar had reserved its order on her application on 13 February this year — at least nine months after she filed an appeal against a Delhi court’s refusal to grant her bail in March 2022.
Even while the matter remained pending, the Supreme Court passed an order in May this year dismissing the police’s petition challenging the Delhi High Court’s order granting bail to Pinjra Tod activists Devangana Kalita and Natasha Narwal, and Jamia Millia Islamia student Asif Iqbal Tanha in June 2021.
The Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) case against the three pertained to a “larger conspiracy” behind the Delhi riots case.
In its appeal against the Delhi HC order, Delhi Police especially took objection to the high court’s observations on the UAPA. The high court had watered down the provisions under UAPA, holding that it should not be invoked to deal with criminal acts that squarely come under the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
On 18 June 2021, the top court put the HC order on hold to the extent of the latter’s opinion on UAPA. Making that part inoperative, the SC said the observations on the merits of the case “shall not be treated as a precedent and may not be relied upon by any of the parties before any court”.
However, in May this year, the Supreme Court said that its observation that the high court order can’t be cited as a precedent will not come in the way of other co-accused asking for bail on the grounds of parity.
This prompted Fatima’s lawyers to file an application in the Delhi HC seeking bail on grounds of parity with Kalita and Narwal. While the HC issued notice on this application on 18 May demanding a response from the government, lawyers familiar with the case told ThePrint that the case was not taken up after that.
The application will now be taken up on 23 January next year.
Similarly, a high court bench comprising Justices Mridul and Bhatnagar had reserved judgment on the bail petition filed by Abdul Khalid Saifi on 5 January this year. After the Supreme Court’s May order in the Kalita and Narwal case, his lawyers approached the high court again demanding parity. However, the case wasn’t taken up after the high court issued notice on this application on 18 May.
Saifi’s case will now be taken up on 18 January next year.
Likewise, the order on Meeran Haider’s bail application was reserved on 6 March and will now be taken up again on 24 January 2024, while those on Shifa Ur Rehman’s and Mohd Saleem Khan’s applications were reserved on 28 July this year.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
Also Read: ‘Pune IS module’ suspect was in touch with 2020 Delhi riots accused Sharjeel Imam, say Delhi Police