The Delhi High Court on Friday granted anticipatory bail to Zafarul Islam Khan, former chief of the Delhi Minorities Commission, in connection with a sedition FIR lodged against him over his social media post.
Justice Manoj Kumar Ohri passed the direction after the Delhi police said the 72-year-old was not required for further investigation. The court, however, asked Mr. Khan to continue cooperating with the investigation.
The High Court was informed that Mr. Khan has appeared before the police on two occasions in relation to the case. His laptop was also seized, the court was told.
Mr. Khan, in his anticipatory bail plea, filed through advocate Vrinda Grover, said he suffers from heart disease and hypertension and was highly susceptible to COVID-19 infection, which can have fatal consequences for a person of his age and health condition.
The Delhi police had on April 30 registered a case under Section 124A (sedition) and 153A (promoting enmity between different groups) against Mr. Khan over a complaint received from a Delhi resident who alleged that he has “made a social media post on Twitter and Facebook [on April 28] and the contents of the post are provocative, intended to cause disharmony and create rift in the society”.
In his petition, Mr. Khan had said the FIR against him was “misconceived, being made on a misrepresentation of facts and an erroneous, untenable reading of the law”.
Mr. Khan had defended his social media post, saying it was on the plight of the minority population, which had been targeted by certain elements in society and further acknowledged the role of the international fraternity in raising concerns regarding the well-being of Indian Muslims.
“The social media post, however, only refers to ‘Hindutva bigots’, which is not a religious group or community, but instead refers in this context to persons on social media posting hate speech and propagating communal disharmony,” he had said.
