Delhi Police moves SC against HC bail to Pinjra Tod activists

The Delhi Police on Wednesday appealed to the Supreme Court against the grant of bail to JNU college students Devangana Kalita, Natasha Narwal and Jamia Millia Islamia scholar Asif Iqbal Tanha, who have been booked underneath the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) in reference to final yr Delhi riots in protest against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA).

The in a single day transfer to method the highest court docket got here after the Delhi High Court made specifically sharp observations in its order, accusing the federal government of blurring the road between rightful dissent and terrorism.

The police arrested Ms. Narwhal, Ms. Kalita and Mr. Tanga, who’re Pinjra Tod activists, final yr.

The trial court docket had denied them bail, following which they moved the High Court efficiently. Ms. Narwal was lately given parole to carry out the final rites of her father, who died of COVID-19.

“It appears that in its anxiety to suppress dissent and in the morbid fear that matters may get out of hand, the State has blurred the line between the constitutionally guaranteed ‘right to protest’ and ‘terrorist activity’,” a Bench of Justices Siddharth Mridul and Anup J. Bhambhani of the High Court stated in a scathing order, releasing the three college students on bail. Democracy could be in peril if the strains have been smudged. Phrase ‘terrorist act’ couldn’t be permitted to be utilized in a cavalier method to typical offences, it acknowledged.

“Having given our anxious consideration to this aspect of ‘likelihood’ of threat and terror, we are of the view that the foundations of our nation stand on surer footing than to be likely shaken by a protest, however vicious, organised by a tribe of college students or other persons, operating as a coordination committee from the confines of a University situated in the heart of Delhi,” it noticed.