Activist Umar Khalid has appealed to the Supreme Court against the Delhi High Court's decision to deny him bail in a case under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) related to the alleged conspiracy behind the February 2020 Delhi riots.
"Due to personal reasons, the undersigned hereby recuses from hearing the matter. Accordingly, let the present matter be put up before the principal district and sessions judge, southeast district, Saket court, for February 13 at 12 pm with a request to transfer the matter," the judge said in an order passed on Friday.
Imam is accused of making inflammatory speeches against the government on the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and the National Register of Citizens,
Imam in his fresh bail plea stated that since the apex court has put sedition (Sec 124-A) in abeyance, his case has improved for grant of bail.
The application alleged that the assistant superintendent of jail recently had entered his cell along with eight-ten people in the garb of a search, assaulted him and called him a terrorist and anti-national.
Sharjeel's lawyer Shaighan Ejaz confirmed that a decision has been taken to appeal the ban but on what grounds the appeal would be filed would be decided after the full order of the tribunal comes out by September 7.
A police official said Chudawala was at the forefront in raising the slogan 'Sharjeel tere sapno ko hum manzil tak pahuchaege (Sharjeel, We will realise your dreams)." A complaint in this regard was lodged by former Bharatiya Janata Party MP Kirit Somaiya on February 2.
"Charges are being framed under sections 124 (sedition), 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion), 153B (imputations, assertions prejudicial to national integration), 505 (Statements conducing to public mischief) of Indian Penal Code, and Section 13 (punishment for unlawful activities) of UAPA," Additional Sessions Judge Amitabh Rawat ordered.
The court also listed for hearing on November 18 bail pleas by other co-accused in the matter, including Khalid Saifi and Meeran Haider.
The Maharashtra government told the Bombay high court on Monday that it will not take any coercive step against activist Sharjeel Usmani if he appeared before the Pune police for interrogation whenever asked to and cooperated with the probe.
'This process is the punishment.' 'Once the trial starts, they know this fairy tale case will fall on its face. So they don't want to begin the trial.'
The court said the legal proceedings against the 11 accused were initiated in a 'perfunctory and cavalier fashion' and 'allowing them to undergo the rigmarole of a long-drawn trial does not augur well for the criminal justice system of the country'.
Former Pakistan captain Rashid Latif has announced plans to write a biography detailing his experiences with match-fixing scandals that plagued Pakistan and world cricket in the 1990s.
The high court said prima facie charges of rioting and unlawful assembly are made out against nine of the 11 accused, including Imam, Tanha and Zargar.
During the proceedings, counsel for Imam said, "From the impugned speech, there is nothing which per se causes any kind of religious animosity. We cannot lose sight of the context. What Sharjeel Imam says, in relation to CAA-NRC, is that in much as it affects one community directly, what kind of support is to be elicited from the majority community."
Chief metropolitan magistrate Dinesh Kumar admitted him on bail on furnishing Rs 25,000 bond with one surety of like amount.
He was slapped with a sedition case after a video of his purported speech went viral on social media where he was heard speaking about "cutting off" Assam and the northeast from the rest of India.
A Delhi court on Friday granted bail to former JNU student Sharjeel Imam in a sedition case in which he was accused of instigating the Jamia riots in New Delhi in 2019.
Imam is accused of offenses relating to sedition, promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, imputations prejudicial to national integration, and public mischief under the Indian Penal Code, and indulging in unlawful activities under the UAPA.
On Monday, another accused Meeran Haider also applied to the restoration of inmate daily phone call facilities.
Batsman Sharjeel Khan has been banned for five years by his country's cricket board (PCB) for his involvement in a spot-fixing scandal in the Pakistan Super League, local media reported on Wednesday.
Opener, Sharjeel recently toured New Zealand and Australia with the Pakistan team and is the only player to have scored a century in the PSL eliminator last year.
Sharjeel Imam's speech at the Aligarh Muslim University neither gave the call for anyone to bear arms nor incited any violence as a result of it, the Allahabad High Court has said granting him bail in a sedition case.
Five teams of the Crime Branch have been deployed to locate Imam, a resident of Bihar, they said.
He had been involved in organising the protests at Shaheen Bagh but came into limelight after a video clip went viral wherein he could be heard making some disturbing comments while addressing a gathering at Aligarh Muslim University, following which he was booked under the sedition charge in the UP town.
Former Aligarh Muslim University student Sharjeel Usmani, accused of hurting religious sentiments with his comments at last week's Elgar Parishad conclave in Pune, will be arrested from whichever state he is in, Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh said on Wednesday.
A Delhi court on Friday denied bail to Jawaharlal Nehru University student Sharjeel Imam in connection with allegedly giving an inflammatory speech and inciting violence in 2019, saying that the speech was on communal lines and its content 'tend to have a debilitating effect on the peace and harmony.'
'One does not understand why you should launch your attack against the Constitution, against Gandhiji, against the Left and Congress regimes at a moment when the Hindutva regime needs such attacks against them.' 'By doing so, don't you think you are playing into the hands of Hindutva forces?', Mohammad Sajjad, who teaches history at Aligarh Muslim University, asks Sharjeel Imam who was arrested on charges of sedition on Tuesday, January 28.
"He is accused of delivering seditious speeches and inciting a particular section of community to indulge in unlawful activities, detrimental to sovereignty and integrity of the nation," the chargesheet said. "In the garb of protesting against the Citizenship Amendment Act, he exhorted people of a particular community to block the highways leading to the major cities and resort to 'Chakka Jam', thereby disrupting normal life," it said.
Imam has been booked under Section 13 (unlawful activities) of the Act in the case, said his counsel advocate Mishika Singh. The police had earlier charged Imam with sedition, alleging his speech promoted enmity between people that led to riots.
The Delhi high court on Tuesday said it will hear on May 26 a plea by JNU student Sharjeel Imam, who has been arrested in a case related to alleged inflammatory speeches made by him during the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act and the National Register of Citizens in 2019, seeking interim bail.
The Pakistan Cricket Board has included opener Sharjeel Khan and fast bowler Muhammad Sami in the squad for the upcoming Asia Cup and World T20 tournaments after injuries to Babar Azam and Ruman Raees.
Khalid is currently in judicial custody in connection with a larger conspiracy case related to the 2020 North East Delhi violence.
The police said it has attached CCTV footage, call detail records and statements of over 100 witnesses as evidence in the charge-sheet placed before Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Gurmohina Kaur. The court had on Monday sent Imam, arrested on sedition charge last month, to one-day custody of the Delhi police in the violence case.
In its supplementary charge sheet, the police said 'serious riots had broken out in consequence to the protest march organised by Jamia students' against the amended citizenship law on December 15 last year.
The court further observed that Imam, also a former JNU student, and Khalid were stated to be 'co-conspirators' in the case and it would thus hear both the two bail applications together.
According to a National Crime Records Bureau report, a total of 356 cases of sedition -- as defined under section 124A of the IPC -- were registered and 548 people arrested between 2015 and 2020, out of which only six were convicted.
The police can now name them in their supplementary charge sheet, an official said. In a late evening statement, the government said that this is a purely procedural matter, adding that the elected government has no role to play in this.
The anti-CAA activist was slapped with a sedition case after his alleged speeches went viral on social media where he was heard speaking about "cutting off" Assam and the northeast from India. Earlier, he had been booked on similar charges by Aligarh police in Uttar Pradesh for a speech he delivered on the AMU campus.
Former Jawaharlal Nehru University student and activist Umar Khalid has completed four years in jail after being arrested in connection with the 2020 northeast Delhi communal riots.
