On Wednesday, a Delhi Court allowed Safoora Zargar, a former Jamia Millia Islamia University student and an accused in the Anti-Hindu Delhi riots cases, to visit her hometown in Kashmir provided that she ‘drops a pin’ on Google Maps for verification of her location, reports Live Law.
According to the reports, the Shahdara District Court in Delhi has allowed Safoora Zargar to visit her hometown in Kashmir for a period of one month for performing religious ceremonies of ‘Aqiqah’ on the occasion of Eid-ul-Milad. The Delhi riots accused has agreed to provide details of her location to the police officers for verification purposes.
Hearing the petition, Additional Sessions Judge Amitabh Rawat allowed Zargar to travel only on the assurance that she will be under the radar of her investigating officer. The court asked Zargar to ‘drop a pin’ on Google maps so that the investigation officer of the case has details about her location.
Dropping a pin means an individual sharing his/her exact location to another person, usually sharing the GPS coordinates of the particular spot. So when you ‘drop a pin’, it means you are informing someone exactly where you are.
Earlier, Safoora Zargar had filed an application stating that since she and her husband’s hometowns are in Kishtwar, and she should be allowed to travel to Kashmir as the ceremony would be performed there. Safoora Zargar is currently on bail on humanitarian grounds, subject to a condition that she will take permission from the court if she intends to leave Delhi.
The Delhi Court directing Zargar to observe all the bail conditions imposed by the Delhi High Court, said, “The applicant shall also furnish the itinerary of her visit to the investigating officer through official email. The applicant will ‘drop-a-pin’ on Google maps so that the Investigating Officer can verify the applicant’s presence and location. The mobile numbers of the Investigating Officer are already known the applicant and are also mentioned in the present application”.
Safoora Zargar – one of the masterminds of Anti-Hindu Delhi riots
Jamia Millia Islamia student Safoora Zargar was arrested under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) for her involvement in the Anti-Hindu Delhi Riots in February 2020. She was reportedly the general secretary of the Congress-backed NSUI’s Jamia unit.
Zargar was among the first two coordinators of the Jamia Coordination Committee, which was set up in December 2020 to protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act. The sociology student from Kashmir was an active member of Congress and its student wing National Students Union of India (NSUI).
The Delhi Police had arrested Zargar in April 2020 for allegedly leading the anti-CAA protests at the Jaffrabad metro station in Delhi. After being denied bail on two previous occasions, the Delhi High Court had granted her bail in June last year based on humanitarian grounds.
The Delhi Police had claimed that she was part of the conspiracy to “destroy, destabilize and disintegrate the Government of India in order to compel to withdraw the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the alleged National Register of Citizens”.
Jamia Millia Islamia student Safoora Zargar, who is currently on bail in the Anti-Hindu riots case, had given birth to a child on October 12 last year.
