The Allahabad High Court has granted bail to notorious Islamist Sharjeel Imam today. The court granted him bail in a case filed against him for his inflammatory speech at AMU. Imam had given the communal speech at the Aligarh Muslim University in January 2019. He was provoking Muslims against the Citizenship Amendment Act.
Police filed a case against Sharjeel in the Aligarh district of Uttar Pradesh. Police have booked him under sections 124A (sedition), 153A (promoting enmity grounds of religion, race), 153B (making statements provoking breach of peace) and 505(2) (statements made which are alarming, false intention to create disharmony) of the Indian Penal Code.
A video of Sharjeel went viral in which he was asking Muslims to cut-off Assam from the rest of India. He was saying, “Assam ko kaatna hamaari zimmedari hai. Assam aur India katkar alag ho jaayen, tabhi ye hamaari baat sunenge. (It is our responsibility to separate Assam. If Assam is cut-off from India, only then they will listen to us).
Now, Imam is claiming that he had called for a peaceful protest and not a secession of Assam. He claims that he was asking for a blockade of roads joining Assam with India or a chakka jam. Advocates Tanveer Ahmed and Talib Mustafa are arguing Sharjeel’s case.
He has been granted bail as he was facing multiple cases for the same speech. However, it does not mean that the Islamists will be out of jail. He is currently lodged in Tihar jail and is facing a slew of charges.
The mastermind of Delhi riots
Imam is accused of the anti-Hindu riots that took place in Delhi in February 2020. Delhi Police has charged him as one of the conspirators of the Delhi riots. More than 50 persons lost their lives in these riots.
According to the charge sheet filed by Delhi Police, Imam wanted to create nationwide unrest. He visited several mosques and distributed pamphlets in the Nizamuddin area of Delhi and other places with the help of Mohammed Kasif. His objective was to provoke Muslims to engage in violence, under the pretext of Anti-CAA protests.
Just before the outbreak of anti-Hindu riots, Sharjeel was in touch with a member of the radical Islamic outfit Popular Front of India (PFI). He visited several sites of anti-CAA protests as asked by the PFI member.
Incidentally, he has been a writer at the left-leaning propaganda site “The Wire”. He has written articles eulogising Jinnah, the creator of Pakistan.
