A Delhi court on Sunday evening granted bail to nine Indian Youth Congress (IYC) activists arrested by Delhi Police in connection with protests at the India AI Impact summit. The Court contended that the protest was 'political dissent', not any organised crime.
Judicial Magistrate First Class (JMFC) Ravi of the Patiala House Court ordered the release of Krishna Hari, Narshimha Yadav, Kundan Kumar Yadav, Ajay Kumar Singh, Jitendra Singh Yadav, Raja Gurjar, Ajay Kumar Vimal, Saurabh Singh and Arbaz Khan.
In a detailed order, the judge held that the Youth Congress’ protest amounted to 'political dissent', not 'recidivist violence or organised crime'.“The protest, at the highest, constituted symbolic political critique during, a public event: t-shirts with leadership imagery, non-inciteful slogans bereft of communal/regional taint, and transient assembly. No evidence discloses property defacement, or delegate panic; exit was orderly via escort,” the Court noted.
Judge Ravi added that prolonged pre-trial detention, bereft of any investigative necessity violates the right to liberty under Article 21 of the Constitution.
Members of the IYC staged a protest inside the India AI Impact Summit held at Bharat Mandapam on February 20. Police have so far made 14 arrests in connection with the case, and accused them of breaching security and raising alleged 'anti-national' slogans at the venue.
The Court noted that none of the criminal provisions invoked against the accused carried a punishment of more than seven years in jail. It rejected the Police’s argument that the sentence may run consecutively. The Court said the police’s argument was 'bereft of jurisprudential moorings at this interlocutory bail juncture, where the judicial gaze is riveted not on the mirage of potential conviction but on the stark realities of pre-trial liberty'.
“Pre-trial detention, severed from any imperative necessity and devoid of persisting investigative demands, ineluctably devolves into an illicit premptive punishment antecedent to conviction - a profound aberration fundamentally at odds with the bedrock axioms of criminal jurisprudence, which exalt liberty as the governing norm and incarceration as the narrowly circumscribed exception,” the Judge added.
The protest constituted symbolic political critique during a public event; t-shirts with leadership imagery, non-inciteful slogans bereft of communal/regional taint.
The prosecution had argued that the protests by the accused posed a threat to national security, international relations and national integrity by disrupting a high-profile global event. It was stated that the investigation is still going on and there is a risk of the accused tampering with the evidence. After considering the case, the Court ordered the release of the nine activists on bail.
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