HC conducted 'mini trial', ignored evidence of sinister conspiracy: Delhi Police to SC

New Delhi: The Delhi Police in their appeal against the bail granted to the three student activists has now submitted before the Supreme Court that the Delhi High Court had almost conducted a "mini trial" and "decided the case in hand on a pe-conceived and a completely erroneous illusion" while granting bail to Natasha Narwal, Asif Iqbal Tanha and Devangana Kalita. 

Unsatisfied with the Justices Siddharth Mridul and Anup J Bhambhani's judgments that dismantled the charges against the students under UAPA to grant bail to them as per the general principles of bail, the Delhi Police have told the SC that the court had ended up recording "perverse finding which are contrary to the record and the arguments made during the hearing" of the case.

The Delhi Police said: "While approaching the case with the said impression, the Hon'ble High Court completely lost sight of the evidences and statements which were produced before it and had arrived at the impugned order discarding the evidence which clearly made out a sinister plot of mass-scale riots being hatched by the respondents along with the con-conspirators."

It added that the high court had erroneously presented the case to be a "simpliciter case of protest by students". The Delhi Police argued that the high court had applied irrelevant considerations while granting the bail to the accused in this case.

The police said: "There was a cause and evidence of terrorist activity against the respondent; there was corroborative evidence, however, while applying the legislative mandate, the Hon'ble High Court misdirected itself and gave ex-facie perverse findings to arrive at a conclusion that no case of UAPA was made out."

Specifically, with respect to the High Court's comments on the Centre blurring lines between the right to protest and terrorism, the Delhi Police said this was an insinuation "unfounded and perverse, that the present case was registered by the Government to suppress dissent. A fortiori, that it was a false case. This, in respectful submission of the petitioner (Delhi Police), was beyond the preview of the bail petition".

The police went on to say that the Delhi High Court's scrutiny in the matter seemed not to be to see whether the allegations and evidence are made out but "to somehow establish that the present case was a case of protest by students and suppression of dissent by the government of the day".

Significantly, another ground that the police have challenged the high court order is that the specific portions of the judgment that narrowly look at UAPA and apply it to only cases where "defence of India" is concerned, would have "far-reaching consequences for cases investigated by the NIA and other investigative agencies"..