You are free to hate Umar Khalid. You don’t need to agree with a single word he has ever spoken. You can also despise his politics entirely. But know that his five-year imprisonment without trial requires your attention. You don’t need to defend him to recognise what his treatment says about the state you live under… and what it will eventually mean for you.
Last week, the Delhi High Court delivered a 133-page judgment denying bail to Khalid and eight others accused in the 2020 Delhi riots conspiracy case. The length of the document would suggest thorough deliberation, but several experts have pointed out that its contents reveal a troubling departure from basic legal principles. The judgment explicitly dismissed the foundational tenet set by the Supreme Court that “bail is the rule and jail is the exception”. Last year, the top court had observed: “In matters of liberty, even one day delay is a day too many… One cannot be deprived of liberty even for a single day. The process should not become punishment.”
According to the Delhi High Court, however, five years without trial is not punishment enough. It declared that the bail rule simply doesn’t apply to “grave” offences under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.
Many journalists and legal scholars have picked apart the allegations against Umar Khalid and the other eight co-accused, which hinge on many flimsy theories. The prosecution alleges that he was part of a “deep-rooted” conspiracy to orchestrate the 2020 Delhi riots that killed 54 people and damaged over 1,500 properties. Khalid and his co-accused apparently planned a “chakka jam” (road blockade) through WhatsApp messages and “secret meetings”, and that this constituted terrorism under UAPA. The JNU scholar allegedly gave speeches criticising the Citizenship Amendment Act, even though the speech in question speaks of a Gandhian approach to protest.
The charges against the others are even stranger. Gulfisha Fatima organised a women’s march. Natasha Narwal and Devangana Kalita participated in protests. All of these are our constitutionally protected rights, yet only some of the accused have been granted bail.
Meanwhile, the evidence is strikingly thin. The prosecution relies primarily on WhatsApp chats about protest coordination and testimony from anonymous “protected witnesses” codenamed ‘Radium’ and ‘Sodium’. These witnesses claim that in secret meetings, there were “open discussions regarding escalation of violence and setting parts of Delhi on fire.” In essence, the prosecution has built a terrorism case around protest planning, supported by anonymous testimony that cannot be challenged, under a legal standard that presumes guilt rather than innocence.
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Making an example
Constitutional law scholar Gautam Bhatia writes in a blog titled “Five Years Of (A) Life – I: The Bail Order in the Delhi Riots Cases” that the “problem for the prosecution, however, was that none of these individuals had publicly called for, or instigated, violence or riots”, which means that they had to build their case around the idea of a conspiracy. In circumstantial cases, Bhatia says that a court can do one of two things. “Given the drastic consequences of denying bail (years of incarceration), it can adopt an ‘eyes wide open’ approach, which requires the prosecution’s evidence on record to be concrete and specific, and for there to exist a clear link between fact and inference (of guilt). Or it can adopt an ‘eyes wide shut’ approach, which takes not just the evidence on the record, but the prosecution’s inferences from that evidence on face value.” This, says Bhatia, is a clear case of the latter.
But jurisprudence matters very little when the state wants to make an example of you. These incarcerated young men and women are spending the best years of their lives behind bars because they illustrate the message that any dissent can and will be crushed. It’s why these young people with little social capital are in jail, and someone like Yogendra Yadav is not. As the psephologist and politician writes in The Indian Express: “If Umar is in jail for saying the CAA was anti-Muslim, I should be too. If Khalid is in jail for coordinating local protests against the CAA, I should be too.”
The Delhi High Court’s verdict is so extreme that even prominent Right-wing commentators have criticised it. Still, plenty other “proud Indians” cluelessly cheer it on. But here’s what those in favour of this spectacle don’t understand: Precedents can rarely be contained. The weapon of repression, once normalised and perfected, becomes available for broader deployment. There’s a reason the phrase “I never thought leopards would eat MY face” is the stuff of internet legend.
The UAPA has already demonstrated this appetite. The acquittal rate under the act stands at a whopping 97.2 per cent for arrests between 2015 and 2020, but it’s a very handy instrument of torture.
It devoured Stan Swamy, an 83-year-old Jesuit priest with Parkinson’s disease, jailed for advocating for Adivasi rights. Swamy was notoriously denied even a straw to drink water. He died in custody in July 2021, murdered by bureaucratic cruelty, never having faced trial. UAPA also consumed GN Saibaba, a wheelchair-bound professor who rotted in prison for a decade before being acquitted and released. He died months after his freedom, destroyed by years of incarceration for crimes that he did not commit. The list goes on: Abdul Wahid Sheikh, a schoolteacher, falsely accused of terrorism in the 2006 Mumbai train blasts. Twelve other men who were charged under MCOCA in the same case and were sentenced to death before being acquitted by the Bombay High Court.
The appetite only grows. After indefinite detention for activists and dissenters, the state is now experimenting with new tools for even elected representatives. A few weeks ago, Parliament passed the 130th Constitutional Amendment Bill, ensuring that ministers will be removed from office if detained for just 30 days in criminal cases. Critics have argued that it’s a complete inversion of the principles of natural justice, and will allow the government a free hand to dispose of, say, opposition CMs.
Even those who cultivate proximity to power discover that grovelling offers no protection. There is no better example than Ranveer Allahabadia, the influencer who built his brand on interviews with those in authority. His deferential, cotton-candy line of questioning couldn’t protect him when the state’s machinery decided to rain down. Or take the recent suicide in Uttar Pradesh of Chetan Saini, brother of a BJP mandal vice-president. Saini killed himself after his 20-year-old fruit shop was demolished in an “anti-encroachment drive.” Until then, the bulldozer was a hallowed symbol of “justice” when used against Muslim homes, and significantly boosted UP CM Adityanath’s rankings.
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The leopards will come
India is hardly alone in this. Across the world, those who cheer authoritarian overreach discover that the bulldozer eventually comes for them, too. In the USA, voters who supported Donald Trump’s immigration crackdowns now watch ICE tear through their own families. The promises to deport “criminals and gang members” have expanded to include anyone with or without proper documentation, including residents with American-born children.
Trump’s policies, in turn, have contributed to a massive anti-Indian sentiment. American racists don’t care if Indian-Americans celebrated Trump’s tough stance on “illegal immigration”; they are happy that H-1B visas are now under the radar. In Australia, an Indian immigrant took the stage at an anti-immigration rally, criticising the government’s “open door policy”. “Anyone can come in, claim a spot and demand that Australia change for them. They are not blending into our culture; they are not protecting our freedom. They are twisting it,” he said. Aussie racists, who only saw a brown man babbling at them, booed and heckled him mercilessly.
The leopards, as we have always known, are equal opportunity face-eaters. And whether they will come for you, is not a matter of “if”, but “when”.
Whether Umar Khalid is guilty or innocent is irrelevant. Whether you will be guilty or innocent when it’s your time won’t matter either. A state that thinks nothing of extinguishing five years from Umar Khalid’s life will not pause to think of you. Its blueprint has been set, the infrastructure is in place, and the public has been trained to look away. Don’t.
Karanjeet Kaur is a journalist, former editor of Arré, and a partner at TWO Design. She tweets @Kaju_Katri. Views are personal.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)