Former JNU student Umar Khalid has withdrawn his bail application in the north east Delhi riots Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) case and filed a fresh one, accusing the prosecution of resorting to dilatory tactics.
Additional Sessions Judge Amitabh Rawat asked the prosecution to file a reply to the new application and adjourned the matter to Wednesday, 8 September.
The development comes after the prosecution objected to the maintainability of the previous bail application.
Khalid's lawyer Trideep Pais told Additional Sessions Judge Amitabh Rawat that he was withdrawing the application seeking bail under Section 439 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) and substituting it with the one under Section 437 after the police objected to it, reported The Wire.
"I have filed an application to substitute the bail application. I don't want it to come in the way. There is no impediment for the court to consider under the relevant provision."Trideep Pais, Umar Khalid's lawyer, as quoted by The Indian Express
The Delhi Police had questioned the maintainability of Ishrat Jahan's bail plea over the same two sections of the CrPC in late August. Jahan had also had been booked under the UAPA in the Delhi riots case.
Pais asked the court to let him continue with the arguments so that even "a day's time is not wasted", as per The Indian Express.
Representing the police, Special Public Prosecutor Amit Prasad objected to Khalid's accusation of the prosecution resorting to 'dilatory tactics'.
"In the interim application you have filed, you have made certain allegations that the objections taken by the prosecution are dilatory tactics. Therefore, to paint the prosecution by saying that it is dilatory tactics is not fair," the prosecutor said.
Pais told the court that only the CrPC provisions, under which the bail application was filed had been changed, Bar and Bench reported.
During the last hearing, Pais had said that the chargesheet exhibited the "storytelling capacity and the fertile imagination of its author" and had compared it to the script of the Amazon Prime show 'The Family Man'.
The allegations against Khalid are under FIR 59, which alleges a conspiracy behind the communal violence that led to the death of at least 53 people.
(With Inputs from Bar and Bench, The Wire and The Indian Express)
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