New Delhi, Oct. 31 -- The Delhi Police on Thursday strongly opposed the release of student activists Umar Khalid, Sharjeel Imam and three others booked under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) in the 2020 Northeast Delhi riots conspiracy case, arguing before the Supreme Court that the alleged offences involved a deliberate attempt to destabilise the State and therefore warranted "jail and not bail". In a 177-page affidavit filed a day before the matter is scheduled to come up for hearing, the police contended that the violence that unfolded in February 2020 was not a spontaneous escalation of protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), but part of a coordinated "regime change operation" executed under the guise of civil dissent. The plan, according to the prosecution, aimed to ignite communal tensions during the visit of then US President Donald Trump, so as to "internationalise" the unrest and project the Indian government as discriminatory. The police submission comes two days after a bench of justices Aravind Kumar and NV Anjaria asked the enforcement agency to consider whether the accused, several of whom have spent nearly five years in judicial custody as undertrials, could be released on bail. "See if you can think of something. five years are over already," the bench told Additional Solicitor General (ASG) SV Raju on Monday, signalling that prolonged incarceration without substantive progress in trial may weigh in favour of temporary release. Under ordinary criminal law, the principle is that bail is the rule and jail the exception; however, under UAPA, courts must first be satisfied that the allegations do not, even on a prima facie level, suggest involvement in terrorist activity before granting bail. The Delhi Police has argued that threshold is not met here. The affidavit, filed through advocate Rajat Nair, asserts that investigators have assembled ocular, documentary and technical evidence to show that the accused were part of a "deep-rooted conspiracy" engineered on communal lines....