New Delhi: The prosecution Tuesday termed as “frivolous, speculative and presumptive” the applications filed by some of those accused of hatching the conspiracy behind the 2020 northeast Delhi riots seeking to know the status of the probe in the case.
Additional Sessions Judge Amitabh Rawat was hearing the applications filed by accused Devangana Kalita, Natasha Narwal, Asif Iqbal Tanha, Meeran Haider, and Athar Khan.
Special Public Prosecutor Amit Prasad said every application failed to disclose any provision in law which could allow their prayers. He said some of the applications were “frivolous” as they were beyond the ambit of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), while the prayers based on the assumption that charges had assumed finality were “speculative” and “presumptive.”
“An accused or applicant can come to court with any piece of paper but that piece of paper cannot become a judicial record. The piece of paper that the court accepts has to be in accordance with the law, and if the law does not provide a right to a person to file an application, does not give a right to derail the proceedings, then such application has to be thrown out at the threshold,” he said.
On judgments cited by the accused in their applications, the SPP said none of the verdicts gave the court the power to entertain them in this manner nor allow it to go beyond the CrPC.
“On August 5 (this year) the court fixed the date for day-to-day hearings on arguments on charges. I had scheduled everything, the counsels were ready and at the last moment at 1.45 pm on September 11, the argument was to start. At that moment the counsels appeared and disrupted the proceedings. These applications are nothing but attempts to derail the trial,” he said.
ASJ Rawat has posted the matter for Friday for further proceedings.
In their applications filed on Monday, Haider wanted to know from the Delhi Police whether the investigation in the matter was complete, while Khan sought adjournment of arguments on charges till the completion of the investigation.
On September 14, Devangana Kalita, Natasha Narwal and Asif Iqbal Tanha had sought a direction to the investigating agency to clarify the status of its probe in the case lodged under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), an anti-terror law, before arguments start on whether to frame the charges.
The accused have been booked under UAPA and several provisions of the Indian Penal Code for allegedly being the “masterminds” of the February 2020 riots, which left 53 people dead and over 700 injured.
The violence had erupted during the protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC) during the week then US President Donald Trump was on a visit to India.
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