Court allows Shifa Ur Rehman to campaign: Custody parole granted for elections

A Delhi court on Wednesday granted five days custody parole to February 2020 riots accused Shafa ur Rehman to contest and campaign for the upcoming Delhi Assembly elections.

Additional sessions judge Sameer Bajpai who was hearing Rehman's interim bail plea for four weeks, directed his release from January 30 to February 3 for 12 hours each day upon a deposit of Rs 2.07 lakh as security expenses.

"Although the present case and the case in which the co-accused Mohammad Tahir Hussain has been granted custody parole by the Supreme Court are altogether different, still when the Supreme Court has declined the interim bail of the co-accused and only granted custody parole to him, this court should also follow the same, the court said. 

Rehman, contesting on a AIMIM ticket, was further ordered not to comment on his pending cases in his campaign, speech or press conferences. The Asaduddin Owaisi-led All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen (AIMIM) announced Rehman as its candidate for the Okhla constituency in the upcoming Delhi assembly elections.

Rehman and several others were booked under the stringent UAPA provisions aside from IPC for allegedly being the "masterminds" of the "larger conspiracy" behind the February 2020 riots, which left 53 people dead and over 700 injured.

(Except for the headline, nothing has been changed by All India News Network in the PTI copy.)