Left parties and rights groups condemned India’s top court on Monday, January 5, after it denied bail to activists Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam even after spending more than five years in prison without trial.
The court, which granted bail to five other accused, Gulfisha Fatima, Meeran Haider, Shifa Ur Rehman, Shadab Ahmed, and Mohammad Saleem Khan in the same case, claimed that the cases of Khalid and Imam stand “qualitatively on different footing as compared to others accused” and was convinced that there is a prima facie case against them.
The court ordered Khalid and Imam to wait for the completion of the recording of statements by some witnesses or a year, whichever is earlier, to file another bail petition.
Khalid, Imam, and others were accused of a larger conspiracy during the New Delhi riots in 2020, in which 53 people were killed and hundreds of others were injured, mostly in the city’s poor and working-class localities.
Anti-CAA protests
Both Khalid and Imam were student activists involved in popular mobilizations against amendments in the country’s citizenship law (Citizenship Amendment Act or CAA) brought by the Hindu supremacist, ultra-right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government in 2019.
It is widely acknowledged that the CAA provides for discrimination based on religious identity in granting citizenship. Protesters demanded the withdrawal of the act, claiming it threatens India’s secular polity.
After the riots began in late February 2020 the violence was used by the Indian government to unleash oppression on the nationwide anti-CAA agitations.
Though it was claimed the riots were provoked by the pro-government forces, a large number of activists and leaders of the anti-CAA protests were arrested. They were accused of involvement in a larger conspiracy against the state and booked under Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) 1967 mostly used in anti-terrorism cases and widely considered draconian.
The arrested spent years in prison without ever facing a trial, with lower courts outrightly denying them bail or deliberately delaying hearings on their petitions.
For example, Khalid’s bail pleas were rejected five times by different lower courts before he finally filed the petition in the Supreme Court in September last year. Even in the Supreme Court the hearing was delayed for months.
While delivering the judgement on Monday, the court asserted that prolonged incarceration affects the constitutional guarantees of life and liberty. Nevertheless, it decided to examine the bail petitions of all the accused individually, saying that they were not on equal footing in terms of culpability.
Suppression of political dissent
Left parties and rights activists questioned the court’s reasoning and accused it of colluding with the right-wing government, led by prime minister Narendra Modi to silence voices of dissent and political opposition in the country.
“It is totally shocking, unfair and unjust for the SC to deny bail to Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam,” said activist and legal expert Prashant Bhusan. He questioned the logic of the judgement to place Khalid and Imam’s case on a separate pedestal than others, claiming it makes a “mockery of rights of life and liberty” and is “shameful”.
M A Baby, general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), also called the Supreme Court’s judgment “shocking” and a “travesty of justice.” He said that Khalid and Imam’s continued incarceration even after five years in prison is a violation of the fundamental rights to life and liberty.
“This ruling effectively enables the BJP government’s repressive tactics of targeting voices of dissent,” Baby said.
CPI (M), in a statement, demanded the immediate release of all political prisoners in the country. It claimed that “prolonged pre-trial incarceration violates the fundamental principle that bail is the rule, not jail, and undermines the constitutional right to liberty and speedy trial.”
CPI (M) questioned the “continued use of UAPA to target dissenting voices”, claiming it “reflects a disturbing pattern of repression and selective justice.”
Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation claimed that by denying bail to Khalid and Imam, “even after more than 5 years of jail without trial, confirms” they are specifically targeted by the state.
CPI (ML) Liberation also said that the judgment rather indicts the country’s top court. It asked the “people of the country to rise up against” the erosion of “democratic institutions and to restore the constitutional ethos in the country.”
