New Delhi, Aug 5 (IANS) The Delhi High Court on Wednesday asked the trial court to decide, “in accordance with the law”, on a petition by CPI-M leader Brinda Karat seeking lodging of FIRs against BJP leaders Anurag Thakur, Parvesh Verma and others for their alleged hate speeches in relation to the anti-CAA protest at Shaheen Bagh.
A division bench of Chief Justice D.N. Patel and Justice Prateek Jalan, while disposing of Karat’s application, asked the magistrate concerned at the Rouse Avenue court to decide on the matter.
The direction came after Karat’s counsel Tara Narula requested the court to dispose of the matter with directions to the trial court to consider it.
Narula further apprised the bench that the magistrate’s court had earlier reserved its judgment on the application after hearing the arguments of all sides but did not pronounce its order as similar issues were pending in the High Court.
The submission came while the court was hearing a batch of matters relating to the violence and riots that erupted in northeast Delhi in February.
After hearing the matter briefly, over video conferencing, the court posted the matters for further hearing on August 24.
Recently, the Delhi Police, in its affidavit filed before the court, had stated that the statements of various political leaders are being examined and necessary action will be taken if evidence is found against them.
“Speeches of political leaders including Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi, Anurag Thakur, Kapil Mishra, Parvesh Verma, Waris Pathan, and others are being examined by the Delhi Police and necessary action in this regard will be taken in due course of time if it is found that their speech had any nexus with the riots,” the affidavit said.
Meanwhile, after a brief hearing, the division bench, headed by Chief Justice Patel, also adjourned, till August 24, the batch of matters relating to the violence in and around the campus of the Jamia Milia Islamia in December last year.
On Tuesday, senior advocate Colin Gonsalves told the bench that the alleged police brutality unleashed on the Jamia students then “was to tell the students to drop the idea of going to the Parliament”.
“The beating was really serious and severe like the police was going against their enemies. Students are not certainly enemies, I suppose…. This was to tell the students that they should forget the idea of marching to the Parliament,” he said.
During the course of hearing, senior counsel Salman Khurshid, appearing for another petitioner, supported Gonsalves’s argument that the police action was intended to stop the students from carrying out a march to the Parliament, saying that while the police can regulate such a march, but here, they decided to not to allow it at all.
Khurshid further said that the gathering of students was intended to be peaceful. “Such march is an ethos of our democracy even if it’s dissent towards the government,” he argued.
–IANS
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