New Delhi: Less than a week after a court discharged Jawaharlal Nehru University student Sharjeel Imam and 10 others in connection with the 2019 Jamia Millia Islamia violence case, Additional Sessions Judge Arul Varma, who held that the police had not arrested the “actual perpetrators” but found “scapegoats”, has recused himself from the case.While discharging the 11 accused in the case, he had slammed the police authorities for filing multiple chargesheets in the case with “nothing new to offer”, adding that it “trampled the rights of the accused”. He had also noted that the police arbitrarily chose to array “some people from the protesting crowd as accused and others as police witnesses”. This “cherry picking” is detrimental to the precept of fairness, he had said.He announced his decision to recuse himself from the case on Friday, February 10 – the day when the Delhi police challenged his ruling in the Delhi high court. The police alleged that the trial court was “swayed by emotional and sentimental feelings”. It added that the court raised aspersions and passed “gravely prejudicial and adverse remarks” against its investigation.Varma, who was hearing two cases related to the violence that took place near Jamia Millia Islamia on December 13 and December 15, 2019, announced his decision to the counsel who appeared before him in the December 15 matter.A report in the Indian Express quoted Deeksha Dwivedi, the counsel for one of the accused, as saying: “When we were present at the hearing, the judge said I am recusing myself from the matter. I told the judge that this is very saddening. The judge told us that you need to have faith in the law and judiciary and that you need to trust the system.”Varma also told the lawyers present in his court that he was recusing himself “due to personal reasons”. The issue was subsequently referred to the Principal District and Sessions Judge at the Saket district court with the request that the case be transferred. The application will come up for hearing on February 13.Varma had discharged the 11 accused in the December 13, 2019 case while holding that “dissent is nothing but an extension of the invaluable fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression contained in Article 19 of the Constitution of India, subject to the restrictions contained. It is, therefore, a right which we are sworn to uphold.”The first information report in the case was filed under sections pertaining to offences of rioting and unlawful assembly and others under the Indian Penal Code.Those discharged by Varma on February 4 included student activists Imam, Asif Iqbal Tanha and Safoora Zargar. In his order, the judge had held that the police had “managed to rope” these accused.Also read: ‘Delhi Police Presented Same Old Facts as Fresh Evidence’: What the Court Said in Jamia CaseHe had also gone to the length to assert that “dissent was an extension of the fundamental right to freedom of speech”. Stressing the need to protect the freedom to dissent, the judge further said, “When something is repugnant to our conscience, we refuse to obey it. This disobedience is constituted by duty. It becomes our duty to disobey anything that is repugnant to our conscience.”Quoting Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud, who had described dissent as a safety valve of democracy, he wrote in his order: “The destruction of spaces for questioning and dissent destroys the basis of all growth – political, economic, cultural and social. In this sense, dissent is a safety valve of democracy.”The judge ruled that there was no prima facie evidence to suggest that the accused persons were part of a mob that launched violence, nor were they brandishing any weapons or throwing stones. “Surely prosecutions cannot be launched on the basis of conjectures and surmises, and chargesheets definitely cannot be filed on the basis of probabilities,” he told the police.The court also said that the police should have gathered credible intelligence and used technology for investigation rather than making the accused persons “scapegoats” and galvanising resources to prove charges against them. “Else, it should have abstained from filing such an ill-conceived chargesheets qua persons whose role was confined only to being a part of a protest,” he added.
