CAA protests: Azad seeks bail, cites ‘boilerplate’ charges, ‘mechanical’ arrest

On Monday, he was treated by doctors at AIIMS for Polycythemia as per directions of the court, which held that Tihar officials had acted callously in regard to his medical condition.

A medical report sent by AIIMS on January 9 to Delhi Police Crime Branch had diagnosed Azad with “Polycythemia in absence of myeloproliferative neoplasm”. AIIMS officials had submitted that “further tests were required to determine the cause”.

Azad had told his lawyers that he would only apply for bail after 15 other men picked up by police were granted bail. After the court granted the men bail on January 9, Azad applied for bail.

The bail plea, filed through advocates Mehmood Pracha and

O P Bharti, alleged that no specific incriminating role has been attributed to Azad in the FIR, whose contents were “vague” and based on “conjectures and surmises”.

It said he was at all times demonstrably making efforts to maintain peace. “Police have invoked boilerplate charges against the accused without the same being founded on any allegation of fact… and have arrested the accused mechanically without following the due process of law…”

The plea further alleged that Azad has been “falsely implicated in the present case as the allegations levelled against him in the FIR are not only ill-founded but also improbable…”

Azad’s lawyers submitted that “charging the accused with being a part of an unlawful assembly is erroneous, as at no point of time… did the police authorities declare, announce, or proclaim the peaceful protesters to be an unlawful assembly…”

“It may also be considered that all material witnesses of the incident are police officials, and therefore it is further unlikely that any witness tampering will be attempted, especially by the accused,” the bail plea read.