The Supreme Court has granted bail to two accused booked under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), observing that their continued incarceration for nearly 12 years with no likelihood of an early conclusion of the trial amounted to a violation of their fundamental right to personal liberty under Article 21 of the Constitution.
A bench of Justice Vikram Nath and Justice Sandeep Mehta directed the release of Mohd. Saquib Ansari and Waqar Azhar on bail in connection with FIR No. 54 of 2011 registered by the Delhi Police Special Cell, subject to conditions to be imposed by the trial court and provided they are not required in any other case.
The petitioners had challenged a common judgment of the Delhi High Court dated April 24, 2026, which upheld the trial court's rejection of their bail applications under Section 43D(5) of the UAPA. The Court noted that the petitioners had remained in custody since 2014 and continued to be incarcerated only because of the Delhi case, having already secured bail or suspension of sentence in two related Rajasthan cases arising out of similar allegations.
Examining the status of the Delhi trial through the e-Courts portal, the bench found that the proceedings had made negligible progress. It recorded that the prosecution had cited 197 witnesses, while only 68 witnesses had been examined so far. More significantly, from January 2025 till date, only two witnesses had been examined, one of them only partly. "The progress of the trial has been extremely slow, and there appears to be no prospect of the trial being concluded in the near future," the Court observed.
The case arose from a First Information Report (FIR) registered in Delhi in November 2011. A Pakistani national arrested in connection with the case had allegedly disclosed the existence of a “Rajasthan Module” of the Indian Mujahideen, planning terror activities in and around Delhi.
Acting on this, explosives and bomb-making materials were recovered in 2014 from the premises of the two accused, Mohd Saquib Ansari and Waqar Azhar, in Jodhpur and Jaipur, respectively.This led to two more FIRs in Rajasthan. Both men were arrested in all three cases in 2014 and have remained in custody since.
In one of the Rajasthan cases, both were convicted by the trial court in 2021. However, their sentences were later suspended by the Rajasthan High Court. They were also granted bail in the second Rajasthan case. Their continued incarceration thus rested solely on the Delhi case after the trial court and Delhi High Court rejected their bail pleas.
Before the Supreme Court, the accused argued that they had already spent nearly 12 years in custody and that the trial was nowhere near completion.The Court further noted that a co-accused had already been granted bail.In these circumstances, it held that continuing to keep the petitioners in custody would violate their right to personal liberty.
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