Being part of WhatsApp group does not imply criminality: Umar Khalid tells Delhi HC

Activist Umar Khalid, who is in jail in the 2020 Delhi riots case, told the High Court on Thursday that merely being part of a WhatsApp group cannot be considered as proof of criminal activity, Bar and Bench reported.

“Merely being on a group is not any indication of anything wrong, in this case I have not even said anything,” Khalid’s legal counsel told the court. “[I] only shared the location of a protest site when someone asked for it. Someone sent me a message. If someone chooses to inform me, it is not attributable to me. Anyway, there was no criminality in the message.”

Advocate Trideep Pais was responding to the Delhi Police’s reference to Khalid’s participation in a WhatsApp group as evidence of criminal conspiracy.

In the chargesheet, the police had alleged that Khalid had “coalesced a coalition of the current government haters that led to the formation of Delhi Protest Support Group on WhatsApp”.

The police had also alleged that the WhatsApp group was formed after Khalid mentored a group of students called “Muslim Students of JNU [Jawaharlal Nehru University]” with the help of Sharjeel Imam, another activist, to incite violence.

Pais also alleged that others such as former Delhi Congress councillor Ishrat Jahan and activist Devangana Kalita “have roles far more in terms of involvement than me [Khalid]”…

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