Delhi riots ‘hate speech’: Sonia, Rahul, Anurag Thakur made respondents by High Court

“Whoever wants to file a counter affidavit, please tell us. We will record it,” the court told the counsel representing the parties.
The court had earlier asked petitioners whether it can proceed to issue any direction against whom the allegations have been made without them being arrayed as parties. Following the court’s observations, the two petitioners – Lawyers Voice and Shaikh Mujtaba Farooq & Ors. – moved two applications seeking to add at least 24 persons, against whom FIRs are being sought, as respondents to the petitions.

Besides the Gandhis, Lawyers Voice in its application prayed for impleadment of AAP leaders Manish Sisodia, Amanutullah Khan; AIMIM leaders Akbaruddin Owaisi, Warris Pathan; lawyer Mehmood Pracha, activist Harsh Mander, former Bombay High Court judge B G Kolse Patil, incarcerated student activist Umar Khalid, actor Swara Bhaskar and others. Farooq, in his application, has prayed for impleadment of BJP leaders Thakur, Kapil Mishra, Parvesh Verma and Abhay Verma.

Lawyers Voice on Wednesday dropped certain names from the list of proposed respondents after it repeatedly failed to furnish their addresses or serve upon them the court notices. “Whosoever has not been served, we will delete,” the counsel representing it told the court.

While making mention of various speeches of political leaders, activists and religious leaders in its petition, the Lawyers Voice has said, “The violence in the aftermath of such series of hate speeches establishes that such gruesome violence that was witnessed in Delhi and those responsible for giving hate speeches should be held responsible for the violence.”
Farooq and others, who are victims of the violence, in their petition said that they have put on record the videos that went viral “relating to four prominent persons as well as other persons from the ruling party and in all these videos the four politicians and others were telling their followers as well as the general population that they should kill those protesting against CAA”.