JNU student leader Umar Khalid has been booked under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) in a case related to the anti-Hindu riots in Delhi, as per reports. Two other leaders from the Jamia Coordination Committee, Meeran Haider and Safoora Zargar, were booked under the same Act. The two are now in judicial custody after they were arrested last week. The Police has claimed in the FIR that the communal violence was a “premeditated conspiracy” by Khalid and others.
The ‘activists’ have also been booked on charges of sedition, murder, attempt to murder, promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion and rioting. The FIR says that Umar Khalid had delivered provocative speeches at two different locations and appealed to citizens to hit the streets and block roads during the visit by US President Donald Trump to spread propaganda at the international level about minorities being attacked in India. The FIR also claimed that in this conspiracy, firearms, petrol bombs, acid bottles and stones were collected at numerous homes.
Earlier, Delhi Police special cell had issued notice to 50 members of the Jamia coordination committee for their alleged connection with rioting and criminal conspiracy pertaining to anti-Hindu riots in north-east Delhi that had claimed the lives of 53 people and had left, over 400 injured.
The Delhi Riots
Massive communal riots broke out in the national capital during Donald Trump’s visit to India. The riots cost huge losses to life and property. Over the course of the investigation, the role of Radical Islamist organization PFI and others came to the fore. Home Minister Amit had promised on the floor of the Parliament that a thorough investigation into the matter would be carried out and the guilty would be punished.