A sedition charge in January 2020 was followed by his arrest under the terror accused tag invocation of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA).
The Delhi High Court on Wednesday released activist Sharjeel Imam in a seddition case concerning the provocative speech he made against violence in connection to the CAA. Imam has been a defendant in the sedition case since January 2020 and is charged under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA).
While striking a balance to show that Sharjeel had also been charged with other offenses, for which he hadn’t even begun serving time, a division bench of Justice Suresh Kumar Kait and Justice Manoj Jain granted Sharjeel bail for the reason that the sentence duration was indeed half of the time to be served for the aforementioned offenses.
These two were identified as Azhar’s co-accused, Naseer, during the hearing and Sharjeel during the sentence hearing, who stated that he deserved statutory bail as he had served four out of seven years in prison.
He also said that sedition law had been kept hidden from the public eye by the Supreme Court, and UAPA provisions put on him do not have more than 7 years imprisonment.
The student activist, however, will continue to be in prison as he was arrested as an accused in a bigger conspiracy case related to the Delhi violence that took place in 2020 in northeast Delhi.
The riots began in February 2020 when the protests against CAA turned into violence, which claimed more than 50 lives.
Sedition charges were filed against Sharjeel for his speeches in Aligarh Muslim University on December 16–17, 2019 and in Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi, on December 13, 2019 during the anti-CAA-NRC protest.
As per the prosecution, during the course of the conversation, the accused, Sharjeel, reportedly said that he would sever Assam and the north-eastern region from the country.
