2020 Delhi riots: Devangana Kalita moves HC, seeks videos of CAA-NRC protests

Special Public Prosecutor Madhukar Pandey, appearing for the police, argued that the petitions were not maintainable. He submitted that the investigation was ongoing and the video footage was not part of the chargesheet.

Appearing for Kalita, advocate Adit S Pujari argued that the police had commissioned certain persons to take videos of the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act and the National Register of Citizens in February 2020. He said these videos have been seized by the police and seizure memo has been filed, and argued that the videos be supplied before the arguments on charge/discharge proceeds before the trial court.

Pujari said his client wants to exercise her “valuable right of getting discharged”. “The videos will demonstrate that during that time, February 22-26, 2020… we were protesting peacefully…,” he said.

Pujari said in one of the petitions, there is a case of murder against his client. “I have been said to be part of a conspiracy to murder one rioter. I’m said to be part of the people who were protesting under the Jafrabad flyover where the videos were recorded. But those videos were not provided. Three years and nine months have gone by. They (police) claim to be under the garb of further investigation and don’t want to provide the videos to me, claiming that videos don’t form part of the chargesheet. They seize videos and take certain screengrabs and then they say videos are not part of the chargesheet,” he said.

Pujari argued that the videos existed, were “exculpatory” and should be provided to his client.

With respect to the petition pertaining to the larger conspiracy case, apart from videos, content of certain WhatsApp chats has been sought in its entirety.