Activist Gulfisha Fatima moves Supreme Court after Delhi HC rejects bail petition in 2020 riots case

Activist Gulfisha Fatima has moved the Supreme Court against a Delhi High Court order rejecting her bail petition in a case in which she has been accused of being part of a “larger conspiracy” linked to the 2020 Delhi riots, Live Law reported on Sunday.

On Saturday, former Jawaharlal Nehru University student Sharjeel Imam also moved the top court against the order.

On September 2, a bench of Justices Navin Chawla and Shalinder Kaur dismissed the bail petitions of Fatima, Imam, Umar Khalid, Mohd Saleem Khan, Shifa Ur Rehman, Athar Khan, Meeran Haider and Abdul Khalid Saifi.

Another division bench of Justices Subramonium Prasad and Harish Vaidyanathan Shankar rejected the bail petition of another accused person, Tasleem Ahmed.

The nine accused persons have been in jail for more than five years.

The violence in 2020 had left 53 dead and hundreds injured. Most of those killed were Muslims.

The Delhi Police have claimed that the violence was part of a larger conspiracy to defame Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government and was planned by those who organised the protests against the amended Citizenship Act.

While dismissing Fatima’s bail applications on September 2, the High Court noted that the activist had created two WhatsApp groups in December 2019 to mobilise women. It said that one of these groups revolved around coordination during the...

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