New Delhi, Nov. 21 -- The Delhi Police told the Supreme Court on Thursday that video clips of speeches by Sharjeel Imam, Umar Khalid and others, together with WhatsApp chats and witness accounts, reveal that the anti-CAA protests linked to the Delhi riots conspiracy case were far from peaceful. Instead, the police claimed, the evidence showed a "planned campaign for economic blockade" and "regime change", driven by "intellectuals", doctors and engineers who had traded their professions for "anti-national" activities. Additional Solicitor General SV Raju, who appeared for the Delhi Police, opposed the bail applications filed by Imam, Khalid, Gulfisha Fatima, Meeran Haider, Shifa-ur-Rehman, Mohammad Saleem Khan and Shadab Ahmed, all accused in the case, and told the court that the evidence reflected a deliberate effort to "destabilise the (union) government" under the cover of agitating against the Citizenship Amendment Act. Raju then played before the bench, a video containing snippets from the several speeches made by Sharjeel Imam that allegedly preceded the 2020 riots. In one such clip, Imam was shown speaking about blocking the "chicken neck" corridor. In another, he laid out a plan to "paralyse Delhi" through a "chakka jam". He pointed out Imam had a degree in engineering. Advocate Siddhartha Dave, who appeared for the accused, countered that the police had handpicked "snippets" from Imam's hours-long speeches to create "prejudice" and insisted that the full recordings paint a different picture. The ASG also attacked what he called the "intellectual facade" surrounding the accused. He said every time the court took up the bail hearing, foreign news outlets such as the NYT extended sympathetic coverage and support campaigns attempting to portray the accused as academics and thinkers being persecuted for dissent. Such a narrative however, Raju said, "masked the scale of the alleged conspiracy." The court will continue hearing the arguments on Friday....