Umar Khalid Archives - Lokmarg

‘Dissent Cannot Be Treated As Terrorism; Umar-Sharjeel Must Get Bail’

By Lokmarg 25th September 2025

Ashutosh S Boddh ‘Vidrohi’, founder of the Ambedkar Students Association, Delhi University, says if liberty is denied without trial, no one will be safe tomorrow. His views:

As a law student and a student leader in Delhi University, I cannot remain silent over the continuing injustice meted out to Umar Khalid, Sharjeel Imam, and other activists charged in the 2020 Delhi riots conspiracy case under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA). The Delhi High Court’s refusal, yet again, to grant them bail on 2 September 2025, is not just a legal decision—it is a statement on the shrinking space for dissent and the erosion of our constitutional values.

It has now been over five years since Khalid and others were arrested, and their trials are nowhere near conclusion. This transforms what should be “pre-trial detention” into punishment itself. In principle, Indian criminal law rests on a simple yet profound doctrine: bail is the rule, jail the exception. This was affirmed time and again by the Supreme Court, whether in State of Rajasthan Vs Balchand (1978) or Sanjay Chandra Vs CBI (2012).

Liberty, as guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution, is meant to be curtailed only in the rarest circumstances, and every accused is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Yet, when it comes to UAPA cases, this principle is abandoned.

Section 43D(5) of UAPA imposes near-automatic denial of bail if the prosecution can establish a “prima facie” case. In practice, this means courts are forced to take the state’s allegations at face value, without subjecting them to deeper scrutiny. The Supreme Court’s judgment in NIA Vs. Zahoor Watali (2019) cemented this approach, making bail under UAPA almost illusory. The result is a system where activists can be imprisoned indefinitely without trial, punished not for proven crimes but for daring to speak truth to power.

Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam are not terrorists. They are young men who raised their voices against authoritarianism, communal hatred, and the oppression of marginalized communities. Their speeches, writings, and activism were firmly rooted in democratic freedoms and social justice. That the state chooses to brand them conspirators is telling—it reveals how dissent itself is being criminalized.

ALSO READ: ‘Under UAPA, Burden Of Proof Lies With Umar, Sharjeel’

As someone engaged in student politics, I see how these imprisonments cast a chilling shadow over campuses and civil society. When activists are jailed without trial for over half a decade, what message does it send to young people who dare to question the government? It signals that democracy will tolerate only silence, not critique. It creates fear where there should be dialogue.

Human rights organizations worldwide have warned against the misuse of UAPA, pointing to its vague language and selective application. The fact that Khalid and Imam remain in jail despite unproven allegations reflects how our legal institutions are increasingly tilted in favour of state power. If liberty can be denied so easily in their case, it sets a precedent for countless others.

This struggle is not just about one or two individuals. It is about the future of democracy in India. Will we allow national security laws to override fundamental freedoms? Or will we, as citizens, reclaim the principle that liberty is the norm, detention the exception?

At Delhi University, many of us are in discussions about organizing campaigns and peaceful marches to demand justice for Umar Khalid and others. Their freedom is not just their right—it is a test of whether India still values dissent, diversity, and the Constitution we hold dear.

The case of Umar Khalid reminds us that the fight for liberty is ongoing. It demands courage from all of us—students, teachers, lawyers, and ordinary citizens. For if liberty can be denied without trial today, none of us can be safe tomorrow.

(The narrator is a student leader and a Law student at the Faculty Of Law in Delhi University)

As told to Deepti Sharma

‘Under UAPA Burden of Proving Innocence Lies With Umar Khalid, Sharjeel’

By Lokmarg 24th September 2025

Arunima Rai, a law student from Lucknow University, says the denial of bail to 2020 riots accused can be a matter of debate & legal interpretation but the High Court has acted as per law. Her views:

Before discussing the issue of denial of bail to Umar Khalid in the 2020 Delhi riots case, it should be made clear to every person born and living in India that anyone’s patriotism and dedication towards the country is not measured or decided by his/her name, caste, creed, religion, region, colour, etc. If an accused is facing serious anti-national or anti-terror charges, he or she is bound to be tried under our laws without any concessions or concerns.

The Delhi High Court in its September 2order has rejected the bail petition of student activist Umar Khalid, Sharjeel Imam and others, saying that “conspiratorial” violence under the garb of demonstrations or protests by citizens could not be allowed. This has once again stirred things up among the ecosystem behind Khalid-Imam, a bunch of so-called ‘activists’ and self-proclaimed members of the civil society, who have been rallying support for Khalid and team from the day of their arrest!

What was further shocking for me was that Khalid-Imam’s supporters were marking the occasion as one of his achievements, for having stayed behind bars for five years. I do not find it amusing when an accused facing charges under Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) is lionised as a ‘revolutionary’. Do the supporters of Khalid-Imam approve of their plans (expressed from a public platform, as reported by the media) to cut down a portion of the country from the mainland and instigating a mob to burn the national capital?

ALSO READ: Sedition Law – A Colonial Gift For Savage Rulers

Now the bigger question: The court, in denying bail, has repeatedly stressed upon the fact that there were “reasonable grounds” to believe that the accusations against them were “prima facie true”. Essentially, they thought there was enough initial evidence to suggest involvement in a “larger conspiracy”. However, the accused have consistently denied these charges, and their legal teams have been arguing that this long pre-trial detention is a clear violation of their fundamental rights.

To be precise, under UAPA provisions that pertain to matters concerning national security, bail cannot be granted on grounds of delay in trial. The entire trial is important because it can set a precedent for the treatment of all terrorism and sedition cases and also for the state’s strategy to deal with dissent.

It should be crystal clear to everyone and all groups and individuals who are crying foul and trying to project Khalid-Imam and others as victims of a legal system because of their specific identities, that Indian laws treat every citizen of India equally. At the same time, seeking or expecting any kind of relaxations under the garb of prejudice or targeting of their religious identity is far-fetched and impossible in our judicial system.

As told to Rajat Rai

There’s No Window In My Cell, Faiz!

By Amit Sengupta 18th April 2025

Listen! Faiz,
Do you know?
The difference
between your and my wait
Is only
A fixed time
Just a few more days
You knew that
Like the gust of breeze
Speechless cloud does not tell
When I ask—
“How many more seasons like this?”
Who knows how many more seasons?
— Gulfisha Fatima, prison poems.

So, how many more seasons, condemned, exiled, trapped, a young girl, a brilliant scholar, a compassionate heart which beats for justice?

How many more seasons would it take for the wise and elderly, in the justice system, and in the political establishment, to realise, that, perhaps this is sheer injustice, and a form of relentless cruelty. Only because she was a peaceful dissenter, and, of course, a Muslim and a woman.

With the arrival of spring and summer, this was no Vivaldi’s lilting four seasons for Gulfisha Fatima. April 9 this year marked five years of un-freedom for her. Five years can look like infinity, if you look at the drab walls which traps a young, restless soul with a spark in her eyes. It could be like living hell.

And, yet, from where do these young minds generate the stoic resilience, the dogged optimism, the spirit of freedom, the power to write?

While the political class, the students and academia, the mainstream media and intelligentsia, chooses to shut their eyes wide shut, a few sensitive souls, recited her poetry, sitting on the bench in a park, inside a metro or a library, across the pan shop on the street, in the classroom, here, there, everywhere, as a symbolic soliloquy of solidarity. And protest.

Devangana Kalita, a former JNU Phd scholar, too, was imprisoned in Tihar Jail, Delhi. She was released along with Natasha Narwal, another JNU researcher. Their crime: peaceful protest with other women against the polarising and communal CAA.

ALSO READ: Devangana’s Husband Andre Ling Recounts Their Ordeal

In a PUCL bulletin, Devangana writes: “Gulfisha did not have any prior experience of engaging or organising protests. She learned and emerged organically as the movement progressed to become a powerful voice of collective assertion and democratic resistance. In the sit-in protest site in Seelampur, she used to regularly hold adult literacy classes for the women who would come to participate in the protest. She was committed to building women’s local initiative and leadership through the protests. In the face of inhuman incarceration, she has remained steadfast in her commitment to education, activism, and the collective spirit of solidarity. Inside the prison, she has become a source of hope and support for her co-inmates, many of whom rely on her for basic literacy, legal aid, and emotional support. As a tutor with the ‘Pado Padhao’ programme inside prison, she has taught fellow prisoners to read and write, and has provided them with a sense of agency that is often denied within the prison system. Gulfisha has also found strength in creativity, turning her hardships into powerful poetry, artwork, and letters that capture the emotional toll of her unjust imprisonment…”

She continues: “It will soon be five years since Gulfisha’s arrest. While Gulfisha got bail in the other two FIRs in 2020 itself, she continues to remain incarcerated under the UAPA case. Her quest for bail in FIR 59/20 has been marked with never-ending adjournments and judicial delays in what has become a complete travesty of justice. She filed for bail in the High Court in May 2022. It will be three years for her, just waiting for a verdict on her petition. Her bail has been argued twice but judges in two benches have been transferred and they have left without pronouncing a judgement. Currently, since November last year, her bail is being argued for the third time in the High Court and the ordeal continues…”

The ordeal continues. According to a statement by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, Gulfisha is detained for protesting religious freedom conditions. In May 2020, Fatima was granted bail in the Jaffrabad protest case (FIR 48/2020). However, she was forced to remain in prison under FIR 59/2020. On June 26, 2020, several UN experts called for the release of Fatima and other protesters, saying that their arrests seem “clearly designed to send a chilling message…that criticism of government policies will not be tolerated”.

For a young girl, exercising her fundamental right of peaceful protest, the commission cites the charges against her: Criminal Premeditation and Conspiracy, Hate Speech, Illicit Financing Murder and Attempted Murder, Public Disorder, Terrorism, and Treason and Sedition.

Similar cases include others who are still languishing in jail: Umar Khalid, Sharjeel Imam, Khalid Saifi, and others. The Neo-Nazi apparatus of stark injustice rolls on.

On June 15, 2021, Devangana, Natasha Narwal and Asif Iqbal Tanha were granted bail by the Delhi High Court in a historic order which observed: “We are constrained to say, that it appears, that in its anxiety to suppress dissent and in the morbid fear that matters may get out of hand, the State has blurred the line between the constitutionally guaranteed ‘right to protest’ and ‘terrorist activity’.” Subsequently, their bail was challenged by Delhi Police in the Supreme Court. On May 2, 2023, the Supreme Court upheld Devangana, Natasha and Asif’s bail. It, however, directed that the above bail order cannot be “treated as precedent”. (Sabrangindia.in, Courtesy Free Speech Collective, April 9, 2025).

In a tweet, Natasha Narwal has written: Today marks three years of Gulfisha’s painful incarceration under UAPA for daring to raise her voice against the unjust CAA-NRC-NPR. She has been penning beautiful heart-wrenching poetry from her prison cell. Listen to them. Let it sink in.

In this darkness at noon, their ordeal speaks of a Neo-Nazi State which seems to have focused on young Muslims, especially enlightened and brilliant scholars, who have a parallel vision for the country, who are peaceful dissenters, and who believe in the Indian Constitution. They are celebrating the murderer of Graham Staines and his two teenage sons, burnt alive in their vehicle in Odisha. In the same manner, a former Union minister garlanded the mob-lyncher in Jharkhand. The same way as “Brahmins with good Sanskar” rapists of Bilkis Bano were feted and garlanded after their release. A predictable pattern, indeed.

The message is cold-blooded: if you are young, Muslim, and, worse, an intellectual with a political vision which is radical, inspirational, egalitarian, secular and pluralistic, and if you dare to protest, then you better be prepared to be condemned in a prison, branded as a terrorist, or charged with sedition and other deadly cases under a draconian law. While bail is the rule, and the accused is deemed innocent till proved guilty, for these young men and women, the process itself has become the punishment.

And, indeed, once they are found innocent, who will return them their nights and days, their seasons of poetry, happiness and romance, their freedom and desires, the love of their loved ones?

Who will give them these precious days of youth back?

In the same poem, writes Gulfisha:

On the pitch-black night yesterday,
There was a knock on the doors of prison
Of the innocent breezes
Of cries of our dear ones
Even the lightning
Was screaming for help
Asking for our freedom
Even the well-shaped branches
Openly joined in the grief
After failed attempts
And losing control
The delicate tears of rain
Started to pour
Struck against the earth’s crust,
And the rhythm of the drops
Turned it into
A commotion of pleas.
But—
The deaf snakes
Kept dancing
With their poisonous hoods
Laying their web of traps.
And—
The oppressed
Stood with their hands raised
On that pitch-black night…
The court says:
Now that you have come
Make an appeal, but yes
It will take long
And by then, you will be exhausted.
Justice says:
I am precious
Hear me loud in clear
You may be destroyed/consumed
Seeking me…

Delhi Riots: SC’s Justice Mishra Recuses From Hearing Umar Khalid’s Bail Plea

By LokMarg 9th August 2023

Supreme Court judge Justice Prashant Kumar Mishra on Wednesday recused from hearing the bail plea filed by former Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student Umar Khalid in an Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act case related to the alleged conspiracy behind the North-East Delhi riots in February 2020.

The matter was listed for hearing before a bench of Justices AS Bopanna and Mishra.

Khalid had approached the top court challenging an October 2022 Delhi High Court verdict that had denied bail to him.

Khalid, arrested by Delhi Police in September 2020, in the High Court had sought bail on grounds that he neither had any “criminal role” in the violence in the city’s North-East area nor any “conspiratorial connect” with any other accused in the case.

The Delhi police had opposed the bail plea of Khalid.

He had approached the High Court challenging the dismissal of his bail application by the trial court in March 2022.

He was charged with criminal conspiracy, rioting, unlawful assembly as well as several sections of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).

Besides Khalid, Sharjeel Imam, activist Khalid Saifi, JNU students Natasha Narwal and Devangana Kalita, Jamia Coordination Committee members Safoora Zargar, former AAP councillor Tahir Hussain and several others were booked under the stringent law in the case.

The violence had erupted during the protests against CAA and NRC and had left 53 people dead and over 700 injured. (ANI)

SC Adjourns Khalid’s Bail Plea Scheduled For July

By LokMarg 12th July 2023

The Supreme Court on Wednesday adjourned the hearing for July 24 on the bail plea filed by former Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student and activist Umar Khalid in a UAPA case related to the alleged conspiracy behind the North-East Delhi riots in February 2020.

A bench of Justices AS Bopanna and MM Sundresh adjourned the hearing after the counsel appearing for Delhi Police sought time to file a response on Khalid’s bail plea.
Senior advocate Kapil Sibal appearing for Khalid told the bench that he has been inside jail for over two years and eleven months now.

Advocate Rajat Nair appearing for Delhi police said chargesheets run in thousands of pages and investigating agency needs some reasonable time to file a reply.

Khalid had approached the top court challenging an October 2022 Delhi High Court verdict that had denied bail to him.

Khalid had approached the High Court challenging the dismissal of his bail application by the trial court in March 2022.

He was charged with criminal conspiracy, rioting, unlawful assembly as well as several sections of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).

The violence had erupted during the protests against CAA and NRC and had left 53 people dead and over 700 injured. (ANI)

Sedition Law – A Colonial Gift For Savage Rulers

By Amit Sengupta 10th February 2020

Section 124-A under which I am happily charged, is perhaps the prince among the political sections of the IPC designed to suppress the liberty of the citizen.
– Mahatma Gandhi, after being charged with sedition by the British, 1922.

What is Section 124A?
– Dr Binayak Sen, when charged with sedition in 2006-07, by the Chhattisgarh government.

Some things just don’t change. Thomas Macaulay, a notorious symbol of the British repressive State apparatus, first drafted the sedition law in the early 19^th century. It kept coming back in different forms in the decades following, including re-enacted and used more potently by the rulers of post-colonial ‘free India’. Macaulay drafted the original law to stop, control, imprison and break the morale of the revolutionaries and freedom fighters struggling to end British rule.

This draconian law was used to suppress them and send a chilling message to all concerned to watch out before they shout even a slogan against the white masters, and the Queen, or utter, write a word, or sentence, or text or draw an image which might amount to ‘treason’ or rebellion against the government or establishment of the day, or an outright instigation in what the British perceived to encourage a potentially violent uprising. Even peaceful dissent could be construed as illegal and thereby seditious.

ALSO READ: Colonial Era Sedition Law Must Go

When it comes to repressive regimes, this one is a free-for-all against any form of dissent considered dangerous by sundry ruling establishments. Hence, it could be a mythical slogan which might have never occurred, or a cartoon or text, or, even an innocuous play or drama enacted by school children in an obscure school in a small town. Such as the one in Bidar.

A small school in Bidar in the BJP-ruled state of Karnataka is a classic example of how brazenly wrong, heartless and absurd can the law of sedition become, especially in the hands of a regime which seems to have made communal polarisation and hate politics its daily mantra, while making the Muslims and the minorities its main target day in, day out. That is the increasing perception now around the world.

A play enacted by the students of a school came into scrutiny of the police, so much so that the little children were questioned several times by the police. The principle and mother of a little girl has been arrested accused of sedition! The lady is a single mother and the child is now with a friend, even while most children are traumatised and terrorised, as a ruthless police seems relentless in continuing interrogation inside the kids’ classroom.

Even in some of the worst historic excesses around the world interrogation of little school kids for performing in a play was never heard of. This is a new low not only for India but for the world.

ALSO READ: Anti-CAA Protest Organiser Booked For Sedition

The closest such a xenophobic interrogation can be equated in contemporary times is only in the massive detention centres/prisons/reformatories in Xinjiang in China where the local Uighur Muslim minorities, in tens of thousands, are imprisoned and ghettoized, in their own homeland, by the totalitarian regime of the Chinese Communist Party. It is now widely reported and confirmed with evidence that the young and old, including little girls and boys, school kids, are being forcibly indoctrinated with Han Chinese ideology, including the Xi Jin Ping variety of communism, in violation of all fundamental rights of humanity and religious freedom. Why is democratic India competing with a totalitarian regime?

A week ago, on a cold early morning in Azamgarh’s Billariyagunj, at 4 am in the morning, Yogi Adityanath’s notorious police entered a small tent where women were sleeping. They were peaceful protesters against the CAA/NRC. The police used tear gas, pelted stones, beat up men and women, including one old woman who was hospitalized with serious injuries. The police generally went berserk. There was no reason for the police to behave in such a crude and inhuman manner, but, in the Yogi regime, this is becoming a norm in UP. There are unconfirmed reports that several individuals have been slapped with the colonial era sedition cases, etc. One wonders what freedom was about if colonialism’s excesses were to be continued after the colonialists left!

Earlier, the UP Police killed over 22 people in the protests against the CAA/NRC, including innocent bystanders who had nothing to do with the protests. Hundreds of otherwise innocent people have been charged with cases, including asked to pay huge sums for the destruction of public property. In most cases, there has not been an iota of evidence. And Yogi gave an open call for “revenge”. There seems to be a new meaning to ‘dharma’.

The cops had apparently entered homes after midnight in small towns, beaten up residents, mothers and daughters, broken windows, doors, TV sets and furniture, and generally spread terror and mayhem in western UP. Locals alleged that some cops even looted the homes, including one home where two educated daughters were meant to get married.

Is this the new normal in UP? With some ray of light from the justice system, the lower courts in town after town are discharging the accused who have been charged with false cases. But it does not seem to deter the UP Government.

Meanwhile, Yogi can come to Delhi and repeatedly sayt that if “they” can’t understand ‘boli’ (talk), surely, they will understand the language of ‘goli’ (bullets). This, after three cases of gun-toting men dangerously stalking Shaheen Bagh and Jamia in Delhi. Predictably, with the Election Commission looking away, and even the Delhi chief minister being branded as an “anarchist and terrorist” by top BJP leaders, it is a grotesque carnival of bad language and inflammatory rhetoric.

However, when it comes to the BJP, they appear to be protected by divine law. The cops and the administration seem to work in remarkable synthesis with rabble-rousers. For instance, they have still not identified the masked goons of the ABVP who went berserk with iron rods on that bloody evening in JNU on January 5 with what appears to be the tacit and overt backing of the Delhi Police. The world saw with alarm when e one madcap Hindutva fanatic, Rambhakt Gopal, made a deadly public spectacle in Jamia with his country-made pistol shooting a journalism student on his palm – the bullet could very well have hit his chest. What were the police doing?

Compare this with a TISS student in Mumbai who shouted a slogan in support of Sharjeel Imam. Surprise, surprise, she has been charged with sedition. Surely, most people who have heard Sharjeel’s ramblings, don’t agree with him. However, to slap sedition charges on him is an abuse of the law, especially when compared with the manner Yogi, Anurag Thakur and Pravesh Singh in Delhi have been allowed to go scot free. If the TISS student can be charged, then surely the entire crowd which shouted ‘goli maaro saalo ko’ with Anurag Thakur leading, should also be booked.

Clearly, there are too many blatant contradictions smacking of injustice and lack of fair play in the manner the colonial era law on sedition is being applied by the police and various governments. Indeed, even the Supreme Court had earlier interpreted that the freedom of thought, unless it instigates violence, is not seditious.

The only crime of Dr Binayak Sen has committed was that he chose to work among the poorest of poor in Chhattisgarh. Only when several noble laureates, academics, artists, actors and writers from all over the world, and people, petitioned, campaigned and protested on the streets, that he was given relief. But, he had to suffer imprisonment and trauma for more than two years on cooked up charges of sedition etc.

The charge of sedition is not used selectively on individuals, as on Gandhi, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, and later on Dr Binayak Sen, Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya. It seems common. Yet not a single false sedition case seems to have been proved or has stood the test of truth in a court of law; only the harassment and the torture continued, apart from the attack on individual reputation and social demonization.

The chargesheet against the January 2016 cases against the JNU student leaders is yet to be filed. Undoubtedly, this will also fall flat in a court of law for lack of evidence. And, yet, BJP leaders, including its top functionaries in the government, never tire of demonising the entire university of JNU.

Significantly, earlier, in a collective punishment, hundreds of peaceful fishermen protesting against the nuclear installation at Kudankulam were charged with sedition. Tribals in Jharkhand, seeking autonomy, have also been charged with sedition.

It is time this brazenly unjust and colonial law of sedition, used arbitrarily and randomly against all concerned by an insecure and bitter regime with no evidence, should be dumped in the garbage can of history. It does not belong to a modern, secular democracy. As Mahatma Gandhi had said, this provision in the Indian Penal Code has no purpose other than violating the freedom and liberty of a free individual and lawful citizen of a free country. When will India be free from the shadow of colonialism and its proteges?