New Delhi: Former Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) councillor and the accused in the 2020 northeast Delhi riots, Tahir Hussain, has filed a petition in the Delhi High Court seeking interim bail to contest the upcoming Assembly Elections.
Recently, the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) party has named Hussain its candidate from the Mustafabad constituency.
Hussain, who is an accused in the Intelligence Bureau (IB) staffer Ankit Sharma’s murder during the 2020 northeast Delhi riots, has requested bail from January 14 to February 9. The Delhi High Court has set the hearing for his application on January 13.
In addition to this, Tahir Hussain has also approached the trial court for interim bail in other cases related to the Delhi riots, and Enforcement Directorate matters.
Recently, the Delhi High Court also issued a notice on the regular bail petition filed by Hussain in the murder case of IB officer Ankit Sharma. The bench of Justice Anoop Kumar Mendiratta, has scheduled the matter for further arguments on January 15.
Hussain’s plea contends that there is a lack of credible evidence against him and seeks bail on the grounds of parity. The plea contended that the applicant is accused of being an instigator and co-conspirator. Of the 20 prosecution witnesses examined so far, the majority of the alleged eyewitnesses have either not supported the prosecution’s case or provided testimony that lacks credibility and cannot be considered reliable.
His plea claimed that the statements of police witnesses also contained significant contradictions and embellishments, making them untrustworthy as evidence against the applicant. The statements of the remaining public witnesses largely mirror those of the witnesses previously examined in the case, it added.
In May, the Delhi High Court granted bail to three men involved in the killing of IB official Ankit Sharma. The court emphasized that bail is the general rule during the pendency of a trial, while incarceration is an exception.
It also noted that the accused had been in custody for four years, and the trial was unlikely to conclude in the near future.
A First Information Report (FIR) was filed by Ankit Sharma’s father in February 2020, after his son went out to buy groceries and other household items but failed to return home for several hours. Concerned for his son’s safety, Sharma’s father filed a missing person’s report with the police.
According to Delhi Police, the four accused were part of a violent mob that killed Sharma, and they were also involved in rioting and arson during the clashes.
The communal violence erupted in northeast Delhi on February 24, 2020, when tensions between supporters of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and protesters escalated, leading to at least 53 deaths and numerous injuries.
(Except for the headline, this article has not been edited by FPJ’s editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)
