The Echo of Hearsay Notes from Umar Khalid’s Bail Hearing
An Essay in 3 Parts by Shuddhabrata Sengupta, The Caravan Magazine, 19th, 20th and 21st May, 2022
Extracts:
in the aftermath of more than two months of continuous protests against the CAA. Umar, Meeran Haider, Khalid Saifi and Sharjeel Imam have not even been accused of committing violence, and yet they are in prison.
Part 1 : How People and Words were on Trial at Umar Khalid’s Bail Hearing.
https://caravanmagazine.in/law/how-people-and-words-were-on-trial-at-umar-khalids-bail-hearing
In the concluding section of the supplementary charge sheet, which the prosecutor paraphrased with sufficient gravitas in court, the prosecution alleged: The singular objective of the conspirators was to overawe the Government of India and to undermine the authority of the Parliament which had enacted the CAA, thus destabilising the very foundations of democracy...it alleged Umar and the other accused did: engineering “vicious and visceral communal violence” to overthrow an elected government. The more the prosecution got into the details of the meetings, messages, speeches and other communication of the alleged conspiracy, the more I saw a pattern of stretching logic to bridge the chasm between actual events and the outcome it desired. The prosecution also relied on statements by unidentified protected witnesses to magistrates or investigators.
rare WhatsApp messages Umar sent on the Delhi Protest Support Group: just got a call from a senior police officer of Delhi Police. He urged me to request those who have called for today’s protest at Police HQ to reconsider their call and not come today. He said the situation is very critical because of today’s developments, and also Trump’s visit, and it wouldn’t be wise to escalate the situation further. This is a request from his end, that I am forwarding here. .. the prosecutor turned this fact on its head. He conjectured that the police officer would have sent Umar this message as an “investigative manoeuvre” to see whether he would pass it on and be taken seriously. The prosecutor argued that this proved that Umar was actually the “hidden hand” or “silent whisper” who controlled everything.
(comment: Next time you get any message formal or informal from any "investigating" authority.. beware.. if you pass it on to anyone, it would prove that you are actually "the hidden hand" or "silent whisper" who controlled everything..)
Part 2 : The Selective Readings of a Special Prosection in Umar Khalid’s Bail Hearing
https://caravanmagazine.in/law/the-selective-readings-of-a-special-prosecution-in-umar-khalids-bail-hearing
a bail hearing is also the first occasion that the prosecution has to paint the darkest possible picture of the accused. The prosecution is still playing its cards close to its chest, withholding aces up its sleeve for the actual trial, but the moves it makes in the bail hearing are shadows and portends. They intimate what the substantive arguments will be when the trial actually gets going.
The case pertaining to FIR 59 relates to the crime of conspiracy. The anti-CAA movement was a largely women-led, unarmed civic protest that swore by the Constitution and abjured violence. Prasad’s job was to show that the movement was a terrorist conspiracy to unleash murder and mayhem and destabilise the foundations of the republic. It was his job to demonstrate that young men such as Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam were the actual masterminds of this conspiracy, and that young women such as Gulfisha Fatima were its executors.
The prosecution’s biggest problem was its fundamental contention that the violence was perpetrated by anti-CAA protesters. To every neutral observer, it has been evident for a long time that the violence was, in fact, targeted against the protesters. It was not to just clear the streets but to empty minds and hearts of the desire for transformation taking hold. We know that the people who are in prison today are those who spoke of peace, while those who spoke of violence, who chanted “shoot the traitors” and threatened to electrocute an entire neighbourhood, are at large. Some are ministers of the ruling regime.
Part 3 : The State’s Portrayal of a Social Contract as Conspiracy in Umar Khalid’s Bail Hearing
https://caravanmagazine.in/law/umar-khalid-bail-hearing-the-states-portrayal-of-a-social-contract-as-conspiracy
The only thing that the prosecution should have been able to reasonably say is that different people at different times talked about chakka jams and spoke of non-violent protests. But the prosecutor asked us to imagine a conspiracy in which the threads barely touch each other and yet constitute a weave.
The prosecutor in the Delhi violence case had both an absence of evidence as well as evidence of absence, and still tried to show the presence of a conspiracy.
Key supporters of the government, the CAA and the Hindu majoritarian ecosystem, such as Narsinghanand, Kapil Mishra and Pinki Chaudhari, announced several times their desires to inflict violence on anti-CAA demonstrators. On one occasion, a mob appeared threateningly close to the main protest site at Shaheen Bagh. A series of incendiary and provocative speeches were made by these actors and circulated on social media in the immediate run-up to the violence. There was coordinated planning of violence, and records of its execution by pro-CAA mobs manned by known members of Hindutva organisations were uploaded from 22 February right till the time that the violence abated on 27 February. Yet, the police did not try to prevent or seriously investigate these actions, and the prosecution ignored them.
What is Amit Prasad’s presentation in court if it is not a litany of irrelevant facts artfully arranged? In fact, I would say that perhaps we need to think of this as a set of fictions, artfully arranged. .. this bail hearing was much more than just a bail hearing. It was a rehearsal of arguments for a fascist takeover of every decent, ordinary act of sharing, communication and trust that still exists in a robust form in our besieged social life. That is why failing to pay attention to the trial that will follow will come at a very high cost for our society’s democratic future.
Conspiracy, like contract, emerges from a meeting of minds. Like contracts, it requires a reciprocity, a mutual making of promises to act in such a way that the action of one conspirator can be completed by the action of another. The only difference between conspiracy and contract is that conspiracy is a covert agreement and a contract is an overt agreement, visible to all. Umar and most members of the DPSG made public commitments to non-violence as an instrument of change. We could see the making of these commitments as a form of reciprocal exchange of promises, which brings them together, despite differences. These promises constitute a contract.
When people feel that the very substance of their citizenship is threatened, it is natural that they should renew a contract of solidarity that is peaceful. Shaheen Bagh and the anti-CAA protests across India constituted a discovery of what citizenship could mean, precisely at the time when citizenship itself seemed most fragile.
Court To Hear Umar Khalid's Bail Plea On Daily Basis From May 23 https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/court-to-hear-umar-khalids-bail-plea-on-daily-basis-from-may-23-2995645
A Division Bench of Justice Siddharth Mridul and Justice Rajnish Bhatnagar on Friday said will hear the arguments as a special bench on Umar Khalid's bail plea from May 23.
All India Asian News International : May 21, 202