Anti-CAA activist and former Congress councillor Ishrat Jahan walked out of Mandoli Jail on Wednesday evening after she was granted bail in the northeast Delhi violence conspiracy case.
Jahan, who has been in jail under draconian UAPA since 2020 March, was released on Wednesday around 7.45 PM.
On Monday, Additional Sessions Judge Amitabh Rawat granted bail to Ishrat Jahan after reserving orders last month and observing that it was persuaded to do so “despite the embargoes” contained in the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act [UAPA] and the Code of Criminal Procedure.
Jahan is now the sixth person to be granted bail in the much criticised UAPA case and the only one to be granted bail by the sessions court.
The other five who have got bail are Faizan Khan, Safoora Zargar, Natasha Narwal, Devangana Kalita and Asif Iqbal Tanha.
In 2020, Jahan got interim bail for 10 days form June 10 till June 19 to marry.
Jahan who is a practising advocate with Bar Council of Delhi since 2006, was elected as a councillor under the Indian National Congress ticket in 2012.
Jahan was among dozens arrested for protesting against the Citizenship Amendment Act, which fast-tracks Indian naturalisation for religious minorities – Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians – from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, but makes no reference to Muslims.
The passage of the law, which the United Nations called “fundamentally discriminatory”, saw tens of thousands of Indians taking to the streets. It was during the anti-CAA protests that violence erupted in Muslim neighbourhoods of northeast Delhi in February last year. At least 53 people, most of them Muslims, were killed, and dozens of houses and mosques destroyed.
Rights groups accused the police in Delhi of inaction and complicity in the violence, the worst the capital had seen since the anti-Sikh genocide of 1984.
In the police crackdown that followed the anti-Muslim pogrom, dozens of activists – a large number of them Muslims, some victims of the violence – were accused of instigating the violence and arrested under draconian UAPA and other charges.
