New Delhi:
The Delhi High Court on Friday rejected a petition by Neha Bora, president of the All India Students' Association, in which she'd challenged a notice asking her to sign a peace bond before a special executive magistrate over her participation in the recent wave of protests, particularly a Mandi House gathering on October 16, over alleged electoral fraud.
Justice Subramonium Prasad, who had reserved the verdict after hearing arguments on Thursday, pronounced the order after 6 pm. The notice, issued by the SEM court in New Delhi district on October 17, the day Bora was released from detention, directed her to appear before the magistrate and execute a personal bond of ₹10,000 with one surety.
In her petition, filed through advocate Abhik Chimni, Neha Bora argued that the notice was ambiguous and factually incorrect, and violated her fundamental rights under Articles 19 and 21 of the Constitution. She contended that it did not provide sufficient material to establish a likelihood of breach of peace, nor specify the period, occasion or event in connection with which such a breach was apprehended.
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During Thursday's hearing, Additional Solicitor General Chetan Sharma, appearing for the Delhi Police, cited 12 instances of alleged violations by Bora and said the proceedings were preventive in nature. He alleged that Bora was part of a gathering where activist Prashant Bhushan and Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) leaders called for a change of regime. "There is nothing wrong in regime change in a democracy," Bora's counsel, senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan, told the court. "Regime change will happen by votes, not by lumpen elements congregating in New Delhi," the police lawyer responded.
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Sankaranarayanan also said Neha Bora was not involved in the CJP's separate protest call at Central Park in Connaught Place on October 16. "She was dealing with her own call at Mandi House," he said.
Bora was detained on October 16 after starting a flag march with AISA activists demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, and was released around 6 am the next day.
The same day, CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke was detained at his home ahead of a 'Lehra Do Tiranga' rally at Connaught Place, called after CJP members Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka were sent to judicial custody for waving the national flag at Jantar Mantar on October 13. Dipke was released the next day, while Das and Ranka came out on Thursday after seven days of judicial custody.
Bora, 29, a theatre artist and doctoral scholar at Jawaharlal Nehru University's School of Arts and Aesthetics, has been detained and released several times this month at protests called separately by the Left, the Congress-led INDIA bloc and the CJP, often posting videos on social media from inside police buses and detention centres. “I am in detention. The movement is not,” she said in one such video on October 10, after she had urged protesters to regroup at Dilli Haat when police blocked access to Jantar Mantar. “Fear is infectious, of course. But hope is also infectious,” she told news agency Reuters in an interview.
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AISA is the student wing of CPI(ML)-Liberation, a Congress ally, and Bora has moved between the Opposition parties and the CJP, which began as a meme page. During the INDIA bloc's march to the Supreme Court on October 12, Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi walked a step behind Bora and his sister, Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, his hands on each of their shoulders. The next day, Bora addressed the press after a meeting of INDIA bloc leaders at Rahul Gandhi's residence, at the request of Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge.