Delhi Police chargesheet reads like ‘Family Man' script: Umar Khalid’s lawyer to court
“Please understand, he's not writing the script of Family Man. He is writing a chargesheet,” Umar Khalid's advocate Trideep Pais submitted before the court.
Former JNU student Umar Khalid's lawyer senior advocate Trideep Pais on Friday sought bail for Khalid in the Delhi riots case and said the chargesheet filed by the Delhi Police reads like a script of Amazon Prime's 'Family Man', Livelaw reported. The chargesheet used rhetorics like 'veteran of sedition' (referring to Umar Khalid) and reads like "a 9pm news script of one of those shouting news channels," the lawyer said adding that the investigating officer has "fertile imagination".
"Please understand, he's not writing the script of Family Man. He is writing a chargesheet... This is the kind of stuff which is read and peddled, the creation of public opinion in order to substitute the lack of evidence to carry out your objective of unfairly prosecute people when you have no material to do so," Pais argued.
In framing the chargesheet, the Delhi Police largely relied on the 2016 chargesheet against Umar Khalid in JNU sedition case. "What happened in 2016 was that there was a poetry session. It was later termed as sedition. Nowhere was it ever alleged that 'Bharat tere tukde honge' was ever said by Umar Khalid," the advocate submitted before additional sessions judge Amitabh Rawat.
Pais could not complete his argument and the court will now hear the case again on Monday.
The argument made by Umar Khalid's lawyer revolved around the point that the Delhi Police has lent a communal colour in its chargesheet to project Umar Khalid communal in front of the public. "If you are saying CAA is bad, it means you believe in this country and secularism. But Delhi Police chargesheet paints anti-CAA protesters as communal," he submitted.
Khalid, along with several others accused of being the mastermind of the February 2020 violence, was booked under the UAPA. In April, Umar Khalid was granted bail in one of the riot cases, saying that he was not present at the scene of the crime. But he continued to be in jail in connection with the case in which UAPA has been invoked against him.
