Delhi Police challenges maintainability of Kalita's plea to access protest video

New delhi: The Delhi Police on Wednesday raised objection regarding the "maintainability" of Pinjra Tod activist and UAPA accused Devangana Kalita's plea before the Delhi High Court seeking copies of video footage of the anti-CAA protests that took place before the North-East Delhi riots broke out in February last year.

Appearing before the court of Justice Suresh Kumar Kait, Additional Solicitor General (ASG) S V Raju, on behalf of Delhi Police, "raised preliminary objection with regard to maintainability of the

petition".

Listing the matter for further hearing on February 4, the court gave the Delhi Police a week's time to "file an affidavit on the maintainability aspect…with advance copy furnished to the other side".

The petition filed by Kalita, represented by Advocates Adit Pujari, Tusharika Mattoo and Kunal Negi, had sought directions from the court to the Delhi Police to provide them with video evidence of protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act that have been attached by police along with the chargesheet prepared in the Jafrabad violence case, where Kalita is one of the accused.

She was, however, granted bail by the High Court on September 1 which observed that the prosecution failed to produce material that Kalita in her speech instigated women of a particular community or gave hate speech due to which a person lost his life.

Earlier, before the trial court, Kalita's counsel had sought copies of a pen drive containing video clips between February 22, 2020, and February 26, 2020; DVD containing video clips of the incident on February 25, 2020, and CD containing photographs and video clips of the accused; DVD containing video clips of protests of January 5, 2020, and DVD containing video clips under Jaffarabad metro station between February 22, 2020, and February 23,

2020.