<p>The Delhi High Court’s denial of bail to nine people, including student activist Umar Khalid, in an Unlawful Activities [Prevention] Act (UAPA) case related to the 2020 Delhi riots, raises disturbing questions about the delivery of justice, adherence to due process, limits of individual freedom, and the State’s commitment to the citizens’ rights. The judgement fails the citizen – it shows that the court would rather be on the side of an overbearing State than with the citizen whose constitutional rights it threatens. Umar Khalid has been in jail for five years with no sign of a trial beginning any time soon. Lower courts have rejected his bail petitions three times, and the Supreme Court has repeatedly postponed his plea.</p>.<p>The court’s ruling offers no convincing defence of its decision to deny bail to the accused, against the basic idea of justice that an individual is innocent until proven guilty and the well-accepted norm that bail is the rule and jail the exception. Though there was no need for the court to go into the substantive charges at the bail stage, it has done that, giving respectability to the patchy evidence presented by the prosecution. WhatsApp chats, in which the accused have not made any comments, and testimonies made by "protected" and unidentified witnesses have been taken as evidence of a plot by the accused to start riots and "burn Delhi". The statement by one of the accused that the government is anti-Muslim and that the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) targeted Muslims has led to a charge against him. The call by another to organise women for a protest against the CAA has been taken as part of a conspiracy. The prosecution considers dissent against the government an act against the State, and the court seems to have accepted this contention, in denial of the citizens’ right to protest.</p>.Nearly 9,000 people arrested under UAPA but only 252 convicted in 5 years.<p class="bodytext">The UAPA is a heavy hammer wielded by the State, especially against critics and others the government does not agree with. The court also has the responsibility to look for justice beyond the law, which it has not done in this case. Its decision appears to be informed entirely by the prosecution’s broad interpretation of the action of the accused as a conspiracy against the State. While affirming that a "hurried trial" is against the interests of the accused, the court has refused to accept that keeping an individual in jail for years without trial is injustice. Its action has only validated this subversion.</p>
<p>The Delhi High Court’s denial of bail to nine people, including student activist Umar Khalid, in an Unlawful Activities [Prevention] Act (UAPA) case related to the 2020 Delhi riots, raises disturbing questions about the delivery of justice, adherence to due process, limits of individual freedom, and the State’s commitment to the citizens’ rights. The judgement fails the citizen – it shows that the court would rather be on the side of an overbearing State than with the citizen whose constitutional rights it threatens. Umar Khalid has been in jail for five years with no sign of a trial beginning any time soon. Lower courts have rejected his bail petitions three times, and the Supreme Court has repeatedly postponed his plea.</p>.<p>The court’s ruling offers no convincing defence of its decision to deny bail to the accused, against the basic idea of justice that an individual is innocent until proven guilty and the well-accepted norm that bail is the rule and jail the exception. Though there was no need for the court to go into the substantive charges at the bail stage, it has done that, giving respectability to the patchy evidence presented by the prosecution. WhatsApp chats, in which the accused have not made any comments, and testimonies made by "protected" and unidentified witnesses have been taken as evidence of a plot by the accused to start riots and "burn Delhi". The statement by one of the accused that the government is anti-Muslim and that the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) targeted Muslims has led to a charge against him. The call by another to organise women for a protest against the CAA has been taken as part of a conspiracy. The prosecution considers dissent against the government an act against the State, and the court seems to have accepted this contention, in denial of the citizens’ right to protest.</p>.Nearly 9,000 people arrested under UAPA but only 252 convicted in 5 years.<p class="bodytext">The UAPA is a heavy hammer wielded by the State, especially against critics and others the government does not agree with. The court also has the responsibility to look for justice beyond the law, which it has not done in this case. Its decision appears to be informed entirely by the prosecution’s broad interpretation of the action of the accused as a conspiracy against the State. While affirming that a "hurried trial" is against the interests of the accused, the court has refused to accept that keeping an individual in jail for years without trial is injustice. Its action has only validated this subversion.</p>
