Witnesses statements cooked-up in riots conspiracy, argues Umar Khalid in court

New Delhi: Former JNU student leader Umar Khalid told a court here on Monday that statements of the witnesses in the Delhi riots conspiracy case were written by someone else and given to them as the police did not have any evidence, and a case can't be made against him on half-truths.

Umar and several others have been booked under the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), and are accused in the "main conspiracy" case related to the north-east Delhi riots last February.

Arguing for Umar's bail before Additional Sessions Judge Amitabh Rawat, senior advocate Trideep Pais read out the statements of three protected witnesses and claimed that they were contradictory, concluding that they had been "cooked up".

During the proceedings, Pais read out a police allegation from the chargesheet regarding an alleged secret meeting in Delhi's Seelampur area on January 23 and 24 last year in which Umar had allegedly directed that the protests be escalated to riots.

Denying that it was a secret meeting, Pais argued that its pictures were taken and uploaded on Facebook. "Does it really look secret to this Court?" he asked.

Paid noted that while one witness codenamed "Sierra" had called the meeting a "secret", no other witnesses had done so — contradicting each other. He added that the statement "clearly" showed that this witness was a tea-seller and asked, "How would a person speak in front of a chaiwala and spill the entire beans of conspiracy? The witness waits from January to June and appears miraculously before the police. Clearly a cooked-up

witness."

Pais also went on to ask how someone who had merely gone in to serve tea, ended up knowing the names of all the people in the meeting and that of those not even there.

"Clearly, these statements are written by someone else, given to these people to pass them off as theirs because you don't have any evidence," the lawyer said.

Pais further said that when Sierra did not record a statement before a magistrate, the police moved on to another protected witness Smith — this witness does not call the meeting a secret.

He also referred to another protected witness Bravo and told the court that heavy reliance was placed on his statements related to chat group Delhi Protest Support Group to implicate Khalid.

"What is interesting is that only four messages were sent by me on DPSG group. I simply gave people the location of the protest site. This is the sum total of my interaction," Pais said, going on to discredit the witness, adding that the witness had "cooked-up" the existence of a purported "high-level committee".

"Whenever he refers to me, he refers to me with a clutch of other names. Their responsibilities are more. Mine are insignificant or not at all… The witness is unable to point out a specific activity that I undertook by virtue of which it can be said that I did an illegal act, a terrorist act," Pais said.