Trial delayed due to cops, absent judges and prosecutors: Umar Khalid in Supreme Court

NEW DELHI: Countering allegations that they are responsible for delay in trial, activist Umar Khalid and other accused in the Delhi riots case, who have been in jail for more than five years, told Supreme Court on Friday the delay was caused by Delhi police, which had taken four years to complete the probe.

Hearing on charges was initiated only in Sept last year and hearing in lower courts was deferred several times because of non-availability of the presiding officer and public prosecutor, they said. Appearing before a bench of Justices Aravind Kumar and N V Anjaria, senior advocates A M Singhvi, Kapil Sibal and Siddharth Dave told the court that the principle 'bail is rule and jail is exception' has been hollowed.

Principle of 'bail is rule, jail exception' hollowed: Khalid Senior advocates A M Singhvi, Kapil Sibal and Siddharth Dave, appearing for student activist Umar Khalid and other accused in the Delhi riots case in the SC, principle 'bail is rule and jail is exception' has been hollowed and needs to be upheld by the court while stressing that the accused had been languishing in jail for more than five years. Referring to an earlier SC verdict, they said that the seriousness of an offence cannot be a ground to deny bail when the accused have been in jail for a long period. Placing before the bench a note on the number of times the hearing in the main matter and application was deferred in the trial court, Sibal, appearing for Khalid, said the presiding judge was on leave for various reasons, including medical grounds and participation in judicial training programmes on 55 dates, and on 59 dates the matter could not be heard due to the unavailability of the special public prosecutor.

"On 11 dates the matter could not be taken up due to issues such as shortage of staff and other administrative and logistical exigencies. On 26 dates, the matter could not be taken up due to heavy workload and paucity of time. On 4 dates of hearing in 2025, no hearing took place on charges due to a lawyers' strike," he told the bench. Regarding arguments on charges pertaining to Khalid, he said they began on Sept 10 and he argued on seven dates and the matter has been adjourned six times - twice on account of a lawyers' strike, once as the counsel for Umar requested to begin arguments on VC and the request was declined, twice on account of the counsel for Umar due to a conflict with another hearing, and once on account of the presiding officer being on leave. He stressed that Khalid was not in Delhi when the riots broke out, and the allegedly inflammatory speech attributed to him was made before the incident, in which he had talked about non-violence and Gandhian philosophy. Singhvi, appearing for Gulfisha Fatima, submitted that the bail application itself was kept pending for more than three years by the high court and said it would be a travesty of justice to keep her in jail for more than five years when other similarly-placed accused had been granted bail.

He said that there is no likelihood that the trial would be completed in the near future as there are more than 900 witnesses. Dave, appearing for Sharjeel Imam, said that the police kept on filing supplementary chargesheets every year, and it was only in Sept 2024 that the trial court passed an order that the probe was complete, paving the way for trial proceedings. "It means that there was no delay on the part of the accused, at least till Sept 2024," he said, adding that Imam was in custody before the riots broke out, in a case pertaining to allegedly controversial speech, and questioned how he could be implicated in the riots case.

The hearing remained inconclusive and will resume on Monday.