Delhi riots: 'Veracity of witnesses' statement cannot be tested at Umar Khalid's bail stage'

New Delhi: The Delhi High Court Wednesday said the veracity of witnesses' statements was not required to be tested at the stage of considering the bail plea of former JNU student Umar Khalid, arrested in a UAPA case related to the alleged conspiracy behind the riots here in February 2020.

The high court also said it cannot hold a mini-trial at the stage of considering the bail plea.

In so far as UAPA is concerned, we have to look at the material on the record without testing the veracity of that material. That material can only be contradicted and rebutted at the time of trial.

You can't say if the statement says three of them (accused) met, then we should test it by holding a mini-trial. You cannot say that, a bench of Justices Siddharth Mridul and Rajnish Bhatnagar said.

To this, Khalid's counsel said he was not at all asking the court to conduct a mini-trial at this stage.

The bench was hearing Khalid's plea challenging a trial court's order which had on March 24 dismissed his bail application in the case.

When the bench said, this is not the stage at which you can test the veracity of a statement. (Zahoor Ahmad Shah) Watali judgement does not support your argument that at this stage we can dissect it any further, the counsel responded, I am not asking you to

dissect.

The court said it will hear further arguments on the bail plea on May 30.

Khalid's counsel had earlier argued that he has been in jail for the last two years based on a protected witness' hearsay statement which has no corroboration.

The counsel had contended that the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act were against an unjust law and it was in no way an act against the Sovereign and that several of the acts alleged or incidents cited against him by the police were not even qualifying as terror' and the protestors were not perpetuating violence as contemplated under the

UAPA.

The high court had earlier questioned Khalid for using certain objectionable words against Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his speech in Amravati on February 21, 2020.

Khalid was arrested on September 13, 2020, and has been in custody since then.