Digvijay Singh backs Umar Khalid

Delhi Police's Special Cell had arrested Umar Khalid on Sunday night under the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, after questioning him for over ten hours.

Hyderabad: Former Madhya Pradesh chief minister and senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh on Tuesday came out in the support of human rights activist, former student, and member of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) Umar Khalid.

Tweeting with the hashtag in favour of Umar Khalid, Singh said, "Harsh Mander has been a very conscientious and honest IAS officer of Madhya Pradesh cadre. I have been familiar with him for the last 35-40 years. If he is in favour of Umar Khalid, I am with him. Gandhian can never be of violent tendency."

Delhi Police's Special Cell had arrested Khalid on Sunday night under the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, after questioning him for over ten hours. He was produced before Additional Session Judge Amitabh Rawat of Karkardooma court via video-conferencing on Monday afternoon.

During the course of proceedings, Special Public Prosecutor Amit Prasad sought 10 days police custody to confront Khalid with huge technical data running into 17,000 pages, "as well as other evidence collected during the investigation of the present case and also to examine at length about other suspects and various other aspects".

According to the remand application, names of some more suspects have also cropped up during the investigation of riots and Khalid is required to be questioned at length about those suspects to obtain their exact particulars for further investigation.

Advocate Trideep Pais, representing Khalid in the case, opposed the remand application and claimed that his client was not in Delhi during the riots.

Pais said that no reason has been mentioned in the remand application as to why such drawn-out police custody is required. "Application has no base. Why has the police not mentioned which speech of Umar was problematic? What do they want for him in 10 days?" he asked.