Last month, on August 11, Umar Khalid spent his fifth birthday behind bars. A fact that completely overshadowed what would have been his 38th birthday celebrations under ordinary circumstances. Words of solidarity, support and wishes poured in from author Arundhati Roy, actor Swara Bhaskar, filmmaker Prakash Raj, apart from a host of activists, literati and academicia. The former university scholar has been languishing in jail since September of 2020 when he was arrested in the wake of Delhi riots.
What do the Indian courts say?
Exactly five years later, this month, the court rejected bail pleas of nine accused, including Khalid, Sharjeel Imam and Gulfisha Fatima, underlining that the 2020 Delhi riots case were not a “regular protest” but a “premeditated, well-orchestrated conspiracy.”
The division bench of Justices Navin Chawla and Shalinder Kaur in a 133-page ruling, noted, “that the present is not a case of regular protest, riot matter but rather a premeditated, well-orchestrated conspiracy to commit unlawful activities threatening the unity, integrity and sovereignty of India.”
The ruling further said, “It becomes the arduous task of the court to strike a balance between individual rights and the interests of the nation, as well as the safety and security of the general public at large. Therefore, these appeals do not succeed.”
This was for the sixth time that the bail plea of Khalid, charged under the controversial and draconian UAPA Act, was rejected; excluding the multiple adjournments.
A brief timeline of the case
Khalid first hit the national headlines in 2016 as one of the five students charged with sedition for organising a protest at his alma mater, Delhi’s prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University. Four years later in September 2020, Khalid, a doctorate, was arrested and accused of being “a key conspirator” in violent clashes that killed 53 people, mostly Muslims. The riots in the Capital followed months-long protests against the contentious CAA, with the chargesheet against Khalid reportedly running into more than 3,000 pages, with an additional 30,000 pages of “electronic evidence.”
Also read: Delhi riots: HC denies bail to Umar Khalid, Sharjeel, 7 others
Legal experts and Khalid’s counsel have cried themselves hoarse alleging that there are glaring gaps in the prosecution’s case, distorted inferences, and illogical assumptions. Those representing Khalid and others argue that there is no evidence on record which shows that these individuals instigated violence in any form. If mere organising of peaceful protest, resulted in violence, then it is the authorities that need to be investigated. The prosecution, however, rests its case on the premise of “conspiracy.”
Global outrage over Khalid’s case
Legal experts have underscored how Khalid’s case is a textbook study of how the special security laws can be tweaked to exclusively serve the state and when combined with deferential judiciary, the process of pre-trial detention itself becomes a punishment. The stringent provisions of Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), under which Khalid has been charged, have been cited by courts time and again to refuse bail despite a five-year-long custody.
Notably, a different bench of the high court, while granting bail to three other activists in the same case, used powerful words to condemn the authorities and ruled that the state in its anxiety to suppress dissent had, “blurred the line between the Constitutionally guaranteed right to protest and terrorist activity.”
The bench also observed that peaceful mobilisation, however inconvenient to the government, could not be casually and arbitrarily categorised as a terrorist act. Amnesty International has called the denial of bail to Khalid, “a huge blow to free expression and peaceful assembly in the country.”
In 2020, shortly after Khalid’s arrest, over 200 thinkers, activists, filmmakers, authors, including Noam Chomsky, Mira Nair, Arundhati Roy, Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh, called on the Government of India to free Khalid.
Also read: Delhi riots: Umar Khalid, Sharjeel Imam bail plea hearing on Jan 7
In 2023, ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s arrival in the US, Democrat Zohran Mamdani read Khalid’s notes from jail. “I’m going to be reading a letter from Umar Khalid, who is a scholar and a former student activist at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, who organised a campaign against lynching and hate. He has been in jail for more than 1,000 days under UAPA and has yet to face trial, though his bail application has been repeatedly denied,” Mamdani told a packed room, while the video of his rendition till date grabs social media attention.
Human Rights Watch stuck its neck out and went so far as to say that Indian authorities had been targeting activists for harassment and arrest. “Instead of impartially investigating allegations that BJP leaders incited violence and police officials were complicit in the attack, the authorities are targeting voices of dissent,” Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said at the time.
But no amount of social media traction, popular public sentiment and mounting pressure from human rights groups and activists have had any effect on Indian courts. They have continued to deny Khalid bail upending the Supreme Court’s repeated judgments calling bail, a rule and jail, an exception. Khalid’s partner Banojyotsna Lahiri has called on the authorities and said that five-year jail without trial itself should be grounds for bail. Meanwhile, student unions of Khalid’s alma mater JNU have announced a solidarity march to mark five years since Khalid’s arrest.
As the time goes by, Khalid, the current poster boy of dissent in India, gathers more influence, a form of soft cultural power. Despite him spending half-a-decade behind bars, the public doesn’t need to jog its memory as the case remains alive and the issue remains unburied.
It’s time the authorities and the courts realised that any further denial of bail or delay of trial will only stand against them in the court of public opinion.
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