Alleging of filing false charge sheet on a northeast Delhi violence case under the UAPA against young activist Umar Khalid, his lawyer told a Delhi court on Friday that, “it is the officer who drafted the report and officer’s mind was communal”.
Senior advocate Trideep Pais who told Additional Sessions Judge Amitabh Rawat that the charge sheet filed by the police was “rubbish”, sounded like a television channel script
However, his arguments could not be concluded and has been adjourned for Monday.
Submitting his report, Pais told the court that The protected witness, Saturn, either speaks under pressure or with a forked tongue”, since he “made a different, inconsistent statement in another FIR, you cannot take it seriously”.
Referring to fabrications in the charge sheet, Pais said there are disturbing facts in the chargesheet, which is the “fertile imagination of the police officer who drafted it.”
Reading out a portion of the chargesheet, which read, “Umar Khalid, a veteran of sedition” Pais raised the question, “Is this how chargesheets are written? It seems like a script of some news channel. Where did they get this from? Harbinger of the call– ‘Bharat Tere Tukde Honge’ — Yeh kahan se mila? (Where did you get this from).”
Submitting the transcript of 2016 charge sheet, Pais said, “Nowhere was it ever alleged that ‘Bharat Tere Tukde Honge’ was ever said by Umar Khalid.”
Pais argued about the police statement which JNU student Sharjeel Imam was a prodigy of Khalid, saying , “No witness ever says this, Sharjeel Imam himself doesn’t say it.”
Painting Umar and movement communal
While reading excerpts which accused the CAA-NRC protests to having a secular facade, Pais said that “it was the mind of the officer that was communal”.
“Not a single statement that it was a charade or that non-muslims were brought in to make it a facade. The movement was what it was,” Pais said.
The lawyer read out the excerpt which stated that Khalid was a silent whisper and there was an “unmistakable hallmark of a maturing Umar Khalid”.
“Ye biography likh raha hai mera? (Is he writing my biography?) How can such rubbish be written,” Pais submitted.
The allegations in the chargesheet continued to the anti-CAA NRC movement. It accused the movement to have used gender cover, media cover and secular cover to mask their protest.
Arguing against the same Pais asked, “Have women said that they were exploited? Or that women cannot have right to protest? I’m not even saying that police is giving it a wrong twist. But is women protesting wrong? Or are they incapable of protesting? Does the movement of any sort be driven only by men?”
Umar’s lawyer concluded that the charge sheet lacked any substantial evidence and as a result it had flimsy charges and accusing statements on Umar’s character and ideologies to painting the protest communal.
