The Delhi High Court on Thursday asked Delhi Police to respond to a bail plea of two accused in the December 2023 Parliament security breach case.

During the hearing, the counsel for the accused – Sagar Sharma and Manoranjan D – told a Division Bench of Justices Vivek Chaudhary and Shalinder Kaur that the act of opening smoke canisters inside Parliament while sloganeering “did not amount to terrorist act” as the smoke was not obnoxious and the intention of the accused was to only “highlight unemployment and not create terror”.

The Bench, however, remarked, “The best way to create terror in India is to disrupt Parliament. You disrupted Parliament.”

It asked the Delhi Police to file a status report on Mr. Sharma’s bail plea and posted the hearing for October 8, when it would also take up Mr. Manoranjan D’s petition, for which it had issued a notice earlier.

The duo had challenged a trial court’s order denying them bail.

Mr. Sharma contended that he was entitled to be released on bail on the grounds of parity with the other two accused who were already on bail. Mr. Manoranjan D called the allegations against him “vague” and alleged that Delhi Police had “wrongly attributed” the charge under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act against him.

The Bench said there was no parity since those granted bail had protested outside Parliament, whereas the present accused were inside it.

In a major security breach on the anniversary of the 2001 Parliament terror attack on December 13, 2023, accused Mr. Sharma and Mr. Manoranjan D allegedly jumped into the Lok Sabha chamber from the public gallery during Zero Hour, opened canisters filled with yellow gas, and sloganeered before some MPs overpowered them.

Around the same time, the other two accused – Amol Shinde and Neelam Azad – allegedly opened coloured gas canisters outside the Parliament premises and raised slogans.

The High Court granted bail to Ms. Azad and another accused, Mahesh Kumawat, in July.