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Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Thursday reserved its verdict on the Delhi Police’s appeal against the trial court order discharging Sharjeel Imam, Asif Iqbal Tanha, Safoora Zargar and eight others in the 2019 Jamia violence case.
Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma reserved the orders after hearing Additional Solicitor General Sanjay Jain make arguments for the Police.
Senior Advocate Rebecca John along with Advocates MR Shamshad, Talib Mustafa, Sowjhanya Shankaran and others appeared for the accused.
The Delhi Police filed an appeal against the order of Additional Sessions Judge (ASJ) Arul Verma who had discharged 11 of the 12 accused in the case.
In his order, the judge also pulled up the Police for filing an “ill-conceived” chargesheet and said that Imam and others were merely scapegoats.
“Marshalling the facts as brought forth from a perusal of the chargesheet and three supplementary chargesheets, this Court cannot but arrive at the conclusion that the police were unable to apprehend the actual perpetrators behind commission of the offence, but surely managed to rope the persons herein as scapegoats,” Judge Verma had said in his order.
Arguing the case on Thursday, ASG Jain said that the trial court order was not sustainable and that the judge held a mini-trial at the stage of framing of charges.
“Visualisation or imagination of the trial court that these are students who are mere bystanders is completely belied by the videos shown by the Delhi Police,” he said.
He further said that in the present case, the key issue is joint liability of the accused, which makes every member of the unlawful assembly constructively liable.
Lawyers appearing for the respondents contended that most of them are university students who were exercising their democratic rights and were protesting against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).
Senior Advocate John said that the person who has been identified as Safoora Zargar has her face covered in the videos. The Police have not given details about how a person whose face was not visible has been identified, she argued.
She said that Zargar was a student of Jamia and, therefore, there is nothing criminal in her being present in the area.
Advocate MR Shamshad, appearing for four of the respondents, stated that Section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) was not in force in the Jamia Nagar area when the people started gathering, and therefore, there was no illegal assembly.
“It is my Article 19 right to protest. It can only be regulated by imposing Section 144 CrPC. But this was not done. This was imposed only in the area around Parliament, not in Jamia Nagar,” he stated.
After hearing the arguments, Justice Sharma reserved her judgement. She asked the counsels appearing for all the parties to file their written submissions in the matter as well.
