Shaheen Bagh: SC postpones hearing, says “environment not conducive”

The Supreme Court on Wednesday postponed the hearing on Shaheen Bagh protests to March 23 under the backdrop of violence in northeast Delhi.
A bench of Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and KM Joseph said that the “environment is not conducive” for hearing the case which seeks to shift the protesters from Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh to somewhere else citing “public inconvenience.” The judges have mentioned that it’s “time for all parties to lower temperatures”.
Hundreds of protesters, most of them women, are on a sit-in protest in Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh for two months now against the contentious Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) that makes religion the basis of getting citizenship. CAA has been criticised to be discriminatory against Muslims.
The court-appointed mediators in Shaheen Bagh case had submitted their report in a sealed envelope to the court on Monday after talking to the protesters in the absence of media.
Justice Kaul said that the matter would be taken up for hearing after Holi when the situation in Delhi is expected to cool down. Violence erupted in Delhi on Sunday over the CAA with the supporters for and against the Act clashing in northeast parts of Delhi. Till now, 20 lives have been lost in the ongoing clashes and hundreds have been injured.
Justice Joseph questioned the role of police in controlling the violence and said, “the problem is lack of professionalism on the part of the police. If it had acted, the situation that we are witnessing today would not have arisen.”

Comments are closed.