'Nothing but hyperbole, grandiloquence'

New Delhi: The Delhi High Court while granting bail to Pinjra Tod activists Natasha Narwal and Devangana Kalita and Jamia student Asif Iqbal Tanha, on Tuesday flayed the Delhi Police's investigation into the "larger conspiracy" behind the north-east Delhi riots, noting that its 19,000-page chargesheet in the case had not one shred of evidence meriting the invocation of UAPA charges.

The bench of Justices Siddharth Mridul and Anup J Bhambhani said that save for "mere grandiloquence" contained in the chargesheet to make a case for UAPA, there is a "complete lack of any specific, particularised, factual allegations" that would merit UAPA charges.

The court called the allegations in the chargesheet against the three activist-students as "superfluous verbiage, hyperbole and stretched inferences".

In fact, while granting bail to both Narwal and Kalita, the court said, "In our reading of the subject charge-sheet and the material included in it, therefore, prima-facie the allegations made against the appellant are not even borne-out from the material on which they are based."

It went on to say, "We find ourselves unpersuaded and unconvinced with this submission since we find it is not founded on any specific factual allegations and we are of the view that the mere use of alarming and hyperbolic verbiage in the subject charge-sheet will not convince us otherwise. In fact, upon a closer scrutiny of the submissions made on behalf of the State, we find that the submissions are based upon inferences drawn by the prosecuting agency and not upon factual allegations."

However, after being "unpersuaded" and "unconvinced" by the State's submissions, the division bench stated that the same was not based on specific factual allegations and that the court was of the view that it was the mere use of "alarming" and "hyperbolic verbiage" in the subject chargesheet and the same will not convince he court to change its opinion on granting bail to the three students.

On further reading of the allegations levelled by the prosecution in the chargesheet, the court noted that there was a complete lack of any "specific, particularised, factual allegations" that is to say allegations other than those which were sought to be spun by "grandiloquence" contained in the chargesheet that would make out the ingredients of the offences under Sections 15, 17 and 18 of UAPA.

In Kalita's judgement too, the court observed that shorn-off the superfluous verbiage, hyperbole and the stretched inferences drawn from them by the prosecuting agency, the factual allegations made against the accused "do not prima facie disclose the commission of any offence under sections of the UAPA".

In its bail order on Narwal, the court, while observing that there was not prima facie material to mert invoking of sections of UAPA, stated that from their reading of the chargesheet in the matter and the material included in it, the allegations made against the appellant were not even borne-out from the material on which they were based. "The state cannot thwart grant of bail merely by confusing issues," the bench noted while granting her the relief.