The Delhi High Court on Thursday granted bail to Salim Malik alias Munna, an accused booked under UAPA in the 2020 Northeast Delhi riots larger conspiracy case.
On May 19, the trial court had refused Khalid interim bail, which he had sought to observe a death ritual of his uncle and to take care of his mother who is due to undergo surgery. The rejection had come a day after the Supreme Court, while underlining that bail is the rule and jail an exception even in UAPA cases, expressed “serious reservations” on the decision of one of its own benches in January to deny bail to Khalid in the 2020 Delhi riots case.
A division bench of Justices Prathiba Singh and Madhu Jain is due to hear Khalid’s plea on Friday.
On Thursday, relying on the very SC judgment from January, Justice Singh and Justice Jain granted bail to Malik, a garment businessman.
Referring to the SC’s verdict, the bench observed, “The Supreme Court had categorised one set of accused persons in these matters as the core ideological drivers of the conspiracy and on the other hand, certain accused persons who were described as local level facilitators and also field operators.”
Malik had claimed parity in his alleged role with two other co-accused in the case who were granted bail by the SC in January: Mohd Saleem Khan and Shadab Ahmad.
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The HC bench, while granting bail to Malik, noted, “…this court is of the view that (Malik’s role) is similar to the role which is attributed to Mohd Saleem Khan and Shadab Ahmad who had also participated in the meetings, protest and chakka jams. There is no major distinction… Under these circumstances… this court is of the view that the appellant deserves to be released on bail subject to the same conditions as imposed in case of Mohd Saleem Khan and Shadab Ahmad by the Supreme Court.”
Malik has been in jail since October 2020. According to the prosecution, Saleem Khan, Salim Malik and another co-accused, Athar, destroyed or covered government-installed-CCTV cameras so that they could allegedly operate fearlessly.
According to Delhi Police Special Cell, Malik attended a meeting with the “conspirators” on February 22, 2020, at Chand Bagh, and delivered “provocative” speeches from the stage at the protest site. He was also allegedly responsible for managing meals and handling financial transactions at protest sites.
On May 18, a division bench of the Supreme Court, comprising Justice B V Nagarathna and Justice Ujjal Bhuyan, expressed its disagreement with the January order of Justices Aravind Kumar and NV Anjaria, referring to the three-judge decision in K A Najeeb in 2021, which had said that an accused undertrial suffering long incarceration under UAPA with no end in sight to the criminal trial must be enlarged on bail.
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Khalid has been in jail since his arrest in September 2020.
The trial court, while refusing him interim bail on May 19 – noting that he and other co-accused in the case have “never flouted conditions imposed by the court” – had, however, recorded: “But it doesn’t mean that on every occasion, whenever the accused seeks bail, the court should grant it.”
The “larger conspiracy” in the case, as per the prosecution, pertains to the alleged creation of 23 protest sites, which operated 24×7 in “Muslim majority areas”, close to mosques and main roads. According to police, the 18 accused wanted to “escalate” the protest to a chakka jam “once critical mass is generated” when then US President Donald Trump visited Delhi in 2020.
