Press framed me, cops' 'proof' from BJP IT cell, Umar argues

New Delhi: Former JNU student leader Umar Khalid on Monday argued before a Delhi court that he had been "framed" by certain media channels in the Delhi riots larger conspiracy case, which in itself was "fabricated", by airing doctored or truncated versions of his speech at Amravati in February last year, which the media channels did not bother to fact check.

And in explosive revelations in court, Senior Advocate Trideep Pais informed the court that the Police had made this truncated clip a part of their chargesheet and that this clip was, in fact, picked up by the news channels from the Twitter account of BJP's IT Cell chief Amit Malviya.

Pais, arguing for Khalid, told the court of Additional Sessions Judge Amitabh Rawat that channels such as Republic TV and News18 simply ran the video uploaded by Malviya on his Twitter profile and didn't have any journalist or cameraperson present at the spot where the speech had been delivered.

To this effect, the counsel showed the court two letters, part of the 17,000-page chargesheet, where Delhi Police Special Cell had written to the channels asking for raw footage of the video.

"I have been framed by the press. Why did they leave other parts of the speech? Quite apart from the fact that nothing happened on 17th (February), you come upon this speech in March," Pais submitted. "This is a place where most of the cases are fabricated these days," Pais claimed, referring to Film City, where most of the TV news channels are headquartered.

The counsel said: "Please see these are journalists who never go on the ground to see speech but are very happy to show it...they never went there. The reply says that they don't have the raw footage and that the video was obtained from a tweet done by a member of BJP... The journalist did not even have the responsibility to go there. It's not a journalistic ethic. This is death of journalism". He added that the channels only obtained the full speech on July 6, which too had not been placed along with the chargesheet.

The lawyer also referred to the fact that News18 had taken out one sentence from the video of the event and that "it made a world of a difference". "All I'm saying is that a message of unity based on Gandhiji was given that day and that was termed as terror...he is talking about democratic power...he does not call for violence or violent methods, he speaks to you about the fear people went through about the violence in Jamia's library...they don't have the courage to produce the entire speech, this is the best evidence they have against me and I produced it," Pais argued, going on to play the entire unedited speech in court.

Arguing that the sole purpose for this "conspiracy" case to be registered was to build a case and implicate anyone based on their proximity to the Opposition and the anti-CAA movement, Pais went on to break the prosecution's case. "Thanks to actual journalism," he continued, pointing the court to a report by The Quint, which has discovered the biggest loophole in the Delhi Police's theory.

He asked how Umar Khalid and other co-accused could know on January 8 of then President Trump's visit and "plan accordingly", when in fact the MEA had announced the visit only on February 11. Pointing to the voluminous chargesheet in the case, the lawyer argued that it was "not worth the paper it's written on" as it selectively targeted people based on their importance to the opposition to CAA.

He called the chargesheet "completely fabricated" and the FIR in the matter as "cooked up", stating that not only Khalid but none of the other accused in the case should have at all been arrested. "You have nothing other than the secret informer in your FIR...the case is being used to cherry pick people not to bring home guilt or justice but to keep them in jail," Pais said.

Picking apart one of the protected witnesses' statement, Pais claimed that he had given a statement on May 21 where he didn't speak about the alleged January 8 meeting between Umar, co-accused Tahir Hussain and Khalid Saifi where they allegedly conspired the February riots, but on September 27, the same witness spoke of the meeting, conveniently included in a supplementary chargesheet. The matter has been adjourned till September 3 and September 6 for further arguments.