The Delhi Police arrested Umar Khalid, former student of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), for his role in the north-east Delhi riots that shook the city as US President Donald Trump touched down in India in February 2020.
The violence that followed the Shaheenbagh protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act 2019 and the National Register of Citizens (CAA-NRC) resulted in more than 50 getting killed apart from the heavy loss of property.
Umar Khalid has been booked by the Delhi Police Special Cell under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. He was reportedly interrogated for several hours before the arrest.
Earlier, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Councillor Tahir Hussain confessed to the Delhi Police during interrogation that he was introduced to Umar Khalid by Kahlid Saifi of United Against Hate at the PFI office in Shaheen Bagh.
Tahir Hussain had confessed at that time that Umar Khalid had asked him to collect acid for the riots.
Delhi Police in the chargesheet it filed in July in connection with the Chand Bagh violence, had claimed that Tahir Hussain and Umar Khalid hatched a conspiracy ahead of US President Donald Trump’s visit to India to defame the Modi government. The police had noted that Umar had assured Khalid and Tahir Hussain that Popular Front of India (PFI) would “provide funds and facilities”.
Tahir Hussain is now behind bars.
Umar Khalid is the son of Syed Qasim Rasool Ilyas who was a member of the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), a radical Islamist organization banned in India.
Earlier on Saturday (September 12), the Delhi Police named Communist Party of India – Marxist (CPI-M) General Secretary Sitharam Yechury, Swaraj Abhiyan President Yogendra Yadav, Delhi University Professor Apoorvananda, economist Jayati Ghosh and documentary film maker Rahul Roy as co-conspirators of the riot, in a supplementary charge sheet.