Counsel of Umar Khalid asks court whether sharing messages is terror act
New Delhi: Additional Sessions Judge Sameer Bajpai was hearing the second bail plea of Khalid before the special court.
Kashmir Media Service reported that the special public prosecutor (SPP) said before the court. ” I created narratives. Is sharing messages (on WhatsApp) a criminal or terror act?… Is the court able to see the ridiculousness of their (prosecution’s) attempts to keep someone in jail? Is it wrong for me to forward a message saying someone is wrongly incarcerated? No,” Khalid’s counsel senior advocate Trideep Pais said.
SPP Amit Prasad had earlier said the data from Khalid’s mobile phone revealed that he was in contact with some actors, politicians, activists and celebrities to whom he sent some news portal links and other contents with a request to share them through their social media accounts to set a particular narrative and amplify it.
“Is there something wrong in sharing that he was going to be arrested? Am I restricted by the number of people I send messages to? Why can’t an accused forward news to someone else? This is the correct narrative,” Khalid’s counsel claimed.
He claimed that the prosecution had “repeatedly” mentioned Khalid’s name “like a mantra” to accuse him of inciting the riots. The counsel asked whether “repeating a lie a hundred times” could make it the truth.
The counsel also claimed that Khalid was subjected to a “vicious media trial” where news anchors of some TV channels were “reading from the charge sheet” round-the-clock.
The senior advocate besides claiming parity with other co-accused who was already granted bail, also reiterated that the Supreme Court’s view about “prima facie evidence” against an accused had changed because of the grant of bail to activist Vernon Gonsalves in July 2023 and to academic-activist Shoma Kanti Sen on April 5 this year in the Elgar Parishad-Maoist links case.
“The public prosecutor had said a test of Vernon Gonsalves and Sen was already done by the court earlier which denied me bail. That is incorrect,” the counsel said.
