Nothing less than a TV script: Umar Khalid's lawyer on charge sheet

New Delhi: Former JNU student Umar Khalid, who is fighting for his bail in the Additional Sessions court in Delhi through advocate Trideep Pais, said that it was the communal mind of the officer who submitted the charge sheet against him in the northeast Delhi riots case under the UAPA.

Pais called the final report of the charge sheet rubbish. He argued that the witness statements were fabricated against Khalid, especially mentioning a protected witness statement, which he termed the forked tongues, pointing out the inconsistency in the statement made in another FIR.

These statements by the witnesses against Khalid were consistent with each other to charge UAPA on someone, Pais argued. He said the charge sheet is not lesser than a script of some news channel as the police officer who drafted it had done it with greater imagination, reading out some of the portions of the charge sheet.

Reading out another portion of the charge sheet that "no amount of rhetoric and obfuscation of facts will be enough to brainwash the Indian Muslims into actually believing that CAA would question their nationality", he said what he had written is just an imagination, asking how did the officer come to the conclusion Indian Muslims like and obey his words.

Pais said that several statements carried in the charge sheet cannot be relied upon because it was made out of sheer imagination and an FIR which was a complete lie. Additional Sessions Judge Amitabh Rawat, who heard these arguments, has been adjourned to Monday for further hearing.