How can I break through

This heavy silence layering my mind?

Without the sound of words

How do I light the vision

Hidden these long days in my eyes?

I must speak and listen to my people

and learn my words again—

If a man loses words

What is left?” 

– Varavara Rao, ‘The Word is the World’ (Captive Imagination)

‘Political Prisoner’ is the criminal offense which most brazenly betrays the promises of a democratic state. It is not a crime of actions but of words: of thinking, speaking, reporting, questioning, demanding, dissenting, resisting. The incarceration of political prisoners strips away the spectacle of electoral politics and constitutional ornaments, exposing the State’s primal instinct: to smother the truth spoken to power, subjugate through enforced silence, and sanctify fear as the law.

On September 2, 2025, the Delhi High Court passed two orders denying bail to ten political prisoners accused in the ‘Delhi Riots Conspiracy Case.’ Umar Khalid, Sharjeel Imam, Athar Khan, Abdul Khalid Saifi, Mohd Saleem Khan, Shifa-ur-Rehman, Meeran Haider, Gulfisha Fatima, Sabad Ahmed, and Tasleem Ahmed were imprisoned in 2020 under the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 (UAPA). Five years later, not a single charge has been framed against them and the trial is far from beginning. The law’s silence is the verdict.

How does a democratic state produce a justice of silence? To answer that, we must unearth the making of a conspiracy: how an investigator’s opinion becomes evidence, the prosecutor’s narrative becomes statutorily irrefutable, and the court’s seal turns lie into truth. We ask what it means to be named a terrorist, expose the perversion of bail under the UAPA, and examine what allows a court to flout judicial precedent and abandon constitutional promises. Will the law emerge as a tool of the people’s justice or a farcical ceremony to justify the oppression of a proto-fascist state?

Engineering a Pogrom

On December 11, 2019, the Indian Parliament led by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) passed the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), which provided an accelerated pathway to Indian citizenship for persecuted refugees of Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi or Christian faith. Read alongside the country-wide implementation of the National Register of Citizens (NRC), the act entrenches a religious basis for citizenship where Indian Muslims, particularly the poor who often lack documentation to ‘prove’ their citizenship, face the prospect of statelessness. This exclusionary design directly flows from the ideology of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the parent body of the BJP, which believes that Muslims, or followers of any religion whose holy sites are located outside of India, can never be equal citizens.

The mass movement against the CAA-NRC was the first major popular challenge to the BJP since it came to power in 2014. What began as student rallies on college campuses evolved into peaceful sit-ins and road blockades (chakka jams) led by women residents, transforming ordinary neighbourhoods into vibrant sites of democratic assertion. It was the first time in the history of independent India that Muslims, under a young, diverse, and committed leadership, came out on the streets not just as a minority community but as proud citizens. It was a deeply instructive moment for young people to learn about politics, organisation, and the power of collective action. By January 2020, there were around 40 sit-ins across the country, with 10 in New Delhi, where people would stage a tent (pandal), host speeches and raise slogans against the discriminatory law. The largest of such sit-ins was in Shaheen Bagh.^[1]

“The path shown by Shaheen Bagh has made our country into one big baagh (garden), and we will bring spring in this garden.” – Umar Khalid (Speech at Amravati, February 2020)

Timeline of Events

Given that the anti-CAA movement was directed at the government to repeal the law and there was no real cause for conflict between Hindus and Muslims, the BJP had to work hard to whip up public sentiment against it. In an apparent bid to polarise the public before the Delhi state elections (that were to be held on February 8, 2020), right-wing activists played up the fact that the anti-CAA protesters were blocking roads and inconveniencing daily commuters.^[2]

On January 27, BJP MP Anurag Thakur, while campaigning in North West Delhi, raised the slogan “desh ke gaddaron ko,” to which the crowd roared “goli maaro sallon ko” (‘shoot down the bastards who betray the country’).

On January 28, BJP MP Parvesh Sahib Singh Verma vowed that If the BJP comes to power in Delhi, they would clear Shaheen Bagh within an hour. “Lakhs of people gather there (Shaheen Bagh)… They will enter your houses, rape your sisters and daughters, kill them,” he claimed in a televised interview.

On the same day, JNU PhD student Sharjeel Imam was arrested by the Jehanabad police and booked under multiple FIRs.

On February 11, the BJP lost the Delhi elections.

On February 20, the Supreme Court set up a mediation team headed by Senior Advocate Sanjay Hegde and Sadhna Ramachandran to hold talks with the protestors at Shaheen Bagh. This was the first attempt to reach out to those who had been sitting in protest since December 16.

However, the government continued to respond to the demands with absolute indifference with no Central Minister deigning to engage with the protesters. With the talks going nowhere, protesters targeted US President Donald Trump’s visit to India on February 24 and 25 to draw attention to themselves by blocking roads.

On February 23, senior BJP leader Kapil Mishra called for forcefully removing protestors. Speaking at Jaffrabad, North East Delhi, Mishra told his supporters, “We will be peaceful till Trump leaves. But after 3 days, if the roads are not cleared, we will not listen to the police.”

Kapil Mishra speaking at Maujpur, North East Delhi, flanked by Deputy Police Commissioner Ved Prakash Surya in riot gear

Hours later, violence erupted in North-East Delhi. The riots went on for five days, leaving 53 people dead, 38 Muslims and 15 Hindus, and 700 injured (for the sake of brevity, we will not go into detail about the violence. Fact-finding reports by the Delhi Minorities Commission (DMC) and Amnesty International India can be read here and here).

On February 25, BJP MLA Abhay Verma led a procession in East Delhi, chanting ‘Jo Hindu hit ki baat karega, wohi desh pe raj karega’ (Only the one who talks of Hindu interests will rule the country), among other provocative slogans.

Of the numerous incidents of hate speech by BJP leaders in the lead up to the riots, the aforementioned four were played in open court on February 26, at the direction of then-Justice S. Muralidhar of the Delhi High Court. The furious judge condemned the hate speeches, questioned the complicity of the police, and instructed the State to ensure the safety of riot victims. That night, Justice Muralidhar was transferred to the Punjab and Haryana High Court, and the case was handed over to a new bench.

On the same day, former municipal councillor Ishrat Jahan and United Against Hate co-founder Abdul Khalid Saifi were arrested by the Jagatpuri police.

On March 6, sub-inspector Arvind Kumar of the Delhi Crime Branch filed the chargesheet for FIR 59/2020, which claimed that the Delhi riots were the result of a “pre-planned conspiracy” by anti-CAA protestors. The accused were charged under 26 sections of the Indian Penal Code, including for murder, sedition, criminal conspiracy, and promoting communal enmity, two sections of the Arms Act, and four sections of the UAPA.

By March 24, the nationwide lockdown to curb the COVID-19 pandemic brought the movement at Shaheen Bagh and other sites to an abrupt halt.

FIR 59: Manufacturing the Narrative

Criminal procedure requires that upon receiving a complaint that prima facie constitutes a cognisable offence, the police must register an FIR. However, the DMC’s fact-finding report reveals that several complaints by Muslim victims were either not registered, delayed indefinitely, or not acted on. In some cases, the police refused to register an FIR unless the complainant omitted names of the accused. In others, victims were asked to arrive at a “compromise” with the accused and withdraw their complaints. On occasion, victims who went to file complaints were themselves arrested.

Of the chargesheets that were filed, crucial aspects of the chain of events, such as Kapil Mishra’s speech, were glaringly absent. The report observes how the investigations were “purposefully misdirected” to twist the cause of the violence: “the entire narrative has been changed to one of violence on both sides rather than a pogrom that was in fact carried out.”

From the outset, the investigation did not seek to reconstruct events to establish accountability for the violence. Instead, the chargesheets wove a narrative designed to legitimise a pre-determined story, where victims were culprits and aggressors were bystanders. This narrative was crystallised by FIR 59, the omnibus “conspiracy” case which charges the accused as “masterminds” of a “premeditated” plot to escalate road blockades into violent communal riots and “defame India” during the US President’s visit.

The charge sheet states that the riots began when “Muslims living in Chand Bagh and New and Old Mustafabad areas were mobilised… in order to precipitate a violent ‘Chakka Jaam’, which led to brutalisation intimidation and inflicting deadly injuries on police personnel and non-Muslim communities,’’ alleging that the “other community” (Hindus) only “retaliated” in self-defence.

The initial chargesheet, filed in Court on September 16, 2020, names 15 accused:

1. Abdul Khalid Saifi
2. Ishrat Jahan
3. Meeran Haider
4. Tahir Hussain
5. Gulfisha Fatima
6. Safoora Zargar
7. Shafa-ur-Rahman
8. Asif Iqbal Tanha
9. Natasha Narwal
10. Devangana Kalita
11. Shadab Ahmed
12. Salim Malik
13. Salim Khan
14. Athar Khan
15. Taslim Ahmad

The Supplementary chargesheet, filed on November 22, 2020, names 3 additional accused:

1. Umar Khalid
2. Sharjeel Imam
3. Faizan Khan

An essential ingredient of a criminal conspiracy is a ‘meeting of minds,’ i.e., a common intent in furtherance of an unlawful goal. To demonstrate this, the chargesheet devotes significant attention to a WhatsApp group called ‘Delhi Protest Solidarity Group’ (DPSG). Student activists are branded “hardcore, professional ideological deviants,” and their routine discussions about protest organisation presented as evidence of complicity. However, the police’s submission contradicts its own story: a message shared at 5:38 PM on February 23 reads “Pro-CAA protesters are pelting stones at the locals and anti-CAA protesters in the Maujpur area,” followed by video evidence. Subsequent messages show activists scrambling to respond to violence already underway.

The chargesheet is riddled with such selective omissions and factual absurdities. The police allege that Tahir Hussain met the “intellectual architect” Umar Khalid on January 8 and plotted communal riots to coincide with Trump’s visit – an impossible timeline, since the visit was not publicly announced until January 13. The chargesheet has since quietly dropped this claim.

The police further claim that the feminist activist group Pinjra Tod provided “a tactical female shield” to the protests, placing women at the forefront to “deter police” from taking action. This is a terribly misogynistic charge, which assumes that women can only be ornamental pawns without agency. Of the hundreds of women deposed, the chargesheet cannot provide a single statement suggesting she was procured, paid, or made “cannon fodder” at a protest site. It is a gross insult to the dadis of Shaheen Bagh, who sustained the peaceful sit-in throughout the five days of rioting.

The 17000-page chargesheet could not attribute a single act of violence, recovery of weapons, speech resulting in incitement, or call for violence to the named accused. The “principal mastermind” Umar Khalid was not even present in Delhi in the three days of the violence. Numerous speeches have quoted him paying homage to the Indian Constitution, and the values of the non-violent struggle led by Mahatma Gandhi. The investigative narrative, built on omissions, inversions, and conjecture, effectively recast democratic protest into terrorism.

Citizen or Terrorist? Designation as Condemnation 

The clandestine nature of a conspiracy made it the perfect storytelling weapon: elastic enough to sustain allegations without showing any causal connection between the accused and the crime, and wide enough to drag just about anyone within its ambit. Once a citizen is designated a “terrorist” who poses a “threat to national security,” facts, evidence, and constitutional reasoning are drowned under conspiratorial hysteria. The absurd reach of this logic is captured by the case of Faizan Khan, a mobile-seller whose crime was selling a SIM card to Jamia student Asif Tanha, which the police claim was later used to ‘plan the conspiracy and the violence.’ For selling a SIM card, Khan was charged with committing a terrorist act.

The UAPA designation was not incidental either. The initial FIR against Umar Khalid’s speeches did not even contain non-bailable offences – these were added only after the Magistrate granted bail to the first set of arrested accused. By then, more than 750 FIRs had already been registered for separate incidents of violence and property destruction^[3]. However, even if the accused are acquitted or allowed bail on other charges, they continue to remain incarcerated under FIR 59.

The invocation of the UAPA enables the prosecution to sidestep ordinary bail safeguards and prolong pre-trial detention. Under the Code of Criminal Procedure, the police have 90 days to complete an investigation and file a chargesheet. The UAPA doubles this period to 180 days, allowing the police to stagger arrests over several months, endlessly revise their case, and keep the accused imprisoned while the narrative takes root.

Significantly, Section 43D(5) of the UAPA flips the maxim ‘bail is the rule, jail is the exception’ over its head. The provision states that if the Court, after perusing the case diary and the chargesheet, finds reasonable grounds for believing that the accusation is prima facie true, then the accused cannot be released on bail. Notably, at this stage, the defence can neither submit exculpatory evidence nor cross-examine the prosecution’s case.

In NIA v Zahoor Ahmad Shah Watali (2019), the Supreme Court interpreted “prima facie true” to mean that the materials or evidence in the FIR “must prevail until contradicted” and the Court is to record a finding based on “broad probabilities.” The Court held that:

• At the stage of bail, courts cannot examine “the merits and demerits” of the evidence or discard any material collated by the investigating agency as inadmissible
• The evidence must be considered “in its entirety” and “not by analysing individual pieces of evidence or circumstance”

Taken together, this means that courts are not only permitted but effectively required to swallow the prosecution’s story whole, while being explicitly forbidden from testing the truth or admissibility of the individual facts on which it rests. Section 43D(5) precludes judges from granting bail if even a “prima facie” case is made out, and Watali lowers the degree of satisfaction to ensure that the prima facie case is made out. The judgement is widely and often blindly cited by High Courts in several bail rejection orders, rendering judicial discretion subservient to the suspicions of the investigating officer.

Though Watali has cast a long shadow, not all subsequent courts have spoken in one voice. A line of liberty-affirming rulings by the Supreme Court has pushed back against its carceral logic. These trace all the way back to Shaheen Welfare Association v. Union of India (1996), where the Court acknowledged the legislature’s decision to sacrifice some personal liberty for the sake of protecting the community, but stipulated that this very sacrifice makes it “all the more necessary that investigation of such crimes is done efficiently” to ensure that “persons ultimately found innocent are not unnecessarily kept in jail for long periods.”

Within modern jurisprudence, the most significant post-Watali judgments are:

1. Union of India v K.A. Najeeb (2021) recognised that protracted incarceration violates the Constitutional right to a speedy trial under Article 21. The Court held that:

• Section 43­D(5) is not the sole metric, but merely ”another possible ground” for the Court to deny bail.
• The rigours of a provision like Section 43­D(5) will “melt down where there is no likelihood of trial being completed within a reasonable time and the period of incarceration already undergone has exceeded a substantial part of the prescribed sentence.”

1. Thwaha Fasal v Union of India (2021) observed that there must be an element of “mens rea” discernible from the facts and circumstances to constitute an offence under the UAPA. The Court ruled that:

• The chargesheet must demonstrate some “overt act” from which it is reasonable to infer that the accused intended to further terrorist activities of a proscribed organisation.
• In other words, vague allegations of conspiracy, based on the general behaviour of the accused, or of the materials that might have been recovered from them, is not enough; there must be a prima facie existence of intention to commit an actual terrorist act.

1. Vernon v State of Maharashtra (2023) granted bail to two accused in the Bhima Koregaon conspiracy case on the ground that the prosecution’s evidence was of “weak probative quality.” The ruling affirmed that:

• Courts must engage in (at least) a surface analysis of probative value of the evidence, as a prima facie case cannot reasonably be made out on weak or unbelievable evidence
• When statutes have stringent provisions, there is a greater obligation on the Court to ensure swift adjudication: “graver the offence, greater should be the care taken to see that the offence would fall within the four corners of the Act.”

1. Shoma Kanti Sen v State of Maharashtra (2024) granted bail to 66-year old Shoma Sen, accused in the Bhima Koregaon conspiracy case, who had been in detention for six years without the charges being framed. The Court highlighted that even the bail-restricting provision of Section 43D(5) must “bow before the right to bail” after prolonged incarceration:

• Bail is a “fundamental right” under Article 21. Courts must consider whether the deprival of liberty from pre-trial detention, both at investigation and post-chargesheet stage, is justified as “reasonable,” “proportionate,” and “following a just and fair procedure.”
• When considering the evidence prima-facie, the court noted that most of the materials from recovered from third parties, that the prosecution has not been able to “raise a hint of corroboration” to accusations of terror financing, and that there is no connection has been established to show a link to a banned organisation.

Because of this split jurisprudence, UAPA bail hearings have become intense sites of contestation between a jurisprudence of carcerality and a jurisprudence of liberty. The pattern of hearings in the Delhi Riots and similar conspiracy cases reveals that courts are faced with a choice: to either fill the gaps in the prosecution’s case with inferences and speculation to make out a prima facie case, or to insist on corroboration and refuse to substitute assumptions for individualised, factual, and particularistic allegations.

It is damning enough that liberty has been reduced to a gamble; worse still is the realisation that even this gamble is rigged with insidious, extra-legal interventions — as the saga of Asif Iqbal Tanha, Natasha Narwal, and Devangana Kalita will show.

The First Cracks: Bail for Asif, Devangana, and Natasha

On June 15, 2021, Justices Mridul and Bhamban of the Delhi High Court passed three orders granting bail to Asif Iqbal Tanha, Devangana Kalita, and Natasha Narwal. This was the first instance of bail granted on merits in the Delhi Riots cases.

The Delhi High Court began by examining the object and purpose of the UAPA. As a central legislation, it could only have been enacted under the Union’s legislative competence under Article 246 and the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution. Therefore, the intent of the UAPA and its amendments “could only have been, to deal with matters of profound impact on the ‘Defence of India’, nothing more and nothing less” (Asif Iqbal Tanha).

This, the Court observes, demonstrates that the stringent provisions of the UAPA are meant to apply only to exceptional cases, and not as a substitute for ordinary criminal law. In distinguishing the ‘exceptional’ from the ‘ordinary,’ the Court relies on Hitendra Vishnu Thakur v State of Maharashtra (1994) to emphasise that the extent of a terrorist activity “travels beyond the effect of an ordinary crime” and “must not arise merely by causing disturbance of law and order or even public order.” These distinctions have been further clarified in Ram Manohar Lohia v State of Bihar (1965), which devised “three concentric circles” to explain the gravity of offences – law and order being the largest, public order being the second, and security of the state being the smallest (gravest).

Having located UAPA within the narrowest circle, the Court turned to the definition of ‘terrorism’. Here, it relied on Maneka Gandhi vs. Union of India (1987) which cautioned that the “life and liberty of the person cannot be put on peril of an ambiguity,” holding that when concepts are inherently imprecise, “courts must strive to give to those concepts a narrower construction than what the literal words suggest.”

Given that UAPA charges are extremely serious with severe punishments, the Court emphasised that the “formation of an independent judicial view” at every step of the way is imperative. It then turned to the prosecution, which carried the investigators’ conspiracy narrative into the courtroom by arguing that what unfolded was not a “typical protest” but an “aggravated protest,” deliberately engineered to disrupt life in the capital. Examining the record, the Court stripped away what it called “superfluous verbiage, hyperbole, and stretched inferences,” and observed that the allegations – inflammatory speeches, organising chakka jams, instigating women to protest, stockpiling materials – are, at worst, evidence of “organised protests” which are “not uncommon when there is widespread opposition to Governmental or Parliamentary actions.” Even if such protests were noisy, disorderly, or crossed the constitutional limits of peaceful assembly, they could only be regulated or prohibited under ordinary law. A protest, even if it spills over into the zone of illegality, is in no way a terrorist act or a conspiracy understood by the UAPA (Natasha Narwal).

“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’. If such blurring gains traction, democracy would be in peril.” – Delhi High Court (Devangana Kalita v State of Delhi NCT, 2021)

The Court recognised the Supreme Court’s ruling in Watali which bars courts from delving into the “merits or demerits” of evidence at the bail stage. It logically concluded that courts must equally resist from delivering into “suspicions and inferences that the prosecution may seek to draw,” and consider the evidence as-is. This reasoning struck at the heart of the prosecution’s case: the evidence showed that (i) the accused organised a protest and chakka jam and (ii) violence occurred in North Delhi, but there was no material demonstrating a causal link between the two. This gap was being filled by assumption and accusation, with the prosecution arguing that even the “likelihood” that the accused’s acts may threaten the nation are an offence within the meaning of sections 15 and 18 of the UAPA. The Court was thoroughly unconvinced, writing that “the foundations of our nation stand on surer footing than to be likely to be shaken by a protest, however vicious, organised by a tribe of college students.”

Next, the Court noted that the accused had spent over a year in pre-trial custody, with 740 prosecution witnesses yet to depose and the trial far from commencing. Relying on Najeeb, it underscored that Section 43D(5) does not override a Constitutional right. In response to the protests of the prosecution, the Court asked pointedly it should wait till the accused have “languished in prison long enough” till their right to a speedy trial “is fully and completely negated, before it steps in and wakes-up to such violation.” (Asif Iqbal Tanha)

Echoing the standard laid out in Thwaha Fasal, the Court questioned whether there was any specific and overt act linking the accused to a terrorist act or its preparation. It observed that the particular acts directly attributed to the accused are WhatsApp messages showing they organised a chakka-jaam, that Narwal and Kalita as part of Pinjra Tod (a lawful organisation) organised women for sit-ins, and that Tanha handed over a SIM card to a co- accused. In the absence of weapons, explosives, or evidence of incitement to violence, the Court dismissed the accusations finding that they built on “inference” and “grandiloquence” rather than concrete, particularised allegations sufficient to make out offences under Sections 15, 17, or 18 of the UAPA.

The three judgments can be read here.

“Not to be treated as precedent”

The very next day, the State rushed to the Supreme Court, complaining that the Delhi High Court had turned the UAPA “upside down.” On June 18, 2021, the Supreme Court heard the appeal and upheld bail. However, it added an extraordinary caveat: that the High Court’s judgment, including its interpretation of the UAPA, “shall not be treated as a precedent and may not be relied upon in any proceeding.”

Advocate Gautam Bhatia has explained that while the phrase “not to be treated as a precedent” has become a recurring feature in Indian jurisprudence, it is entirely outside the law.^[4] When a constitutional court delivers a reasoned judgment, the appellate court’s role is only to decide whether it was right or wrong. Until reversed, that judgment carries the force of law. It is not within the Supreme Court’s authority to act as if the judgment of another constitutional court simply does not exist — and worse, to order every other court to participate in this legal fiction.

The Delhi High Court’s judgment was not reversed but absurdly quarantined. The only possible objective was to ensure that the order could not be binding precedent used to secure bail for any other accused in the Delhi Riots conspiracy case, given the clear factual parity. In the interim order, the Supreme Court explains that “the idea was to protect the State against use of the judgment on enunciation of law qua interpretation of the provisions of the UAPA Act in a bail matter.” The highest court in the land stated unequivocally that it was not concerned with protecting individual liberty against the State, but with protecting the State against individuals seeking liberty^[5].

The Supreme Court’s order can be read here:

“All Appeals Dismissed”

Five years after the riots that shook Northeast Delhi, on September 2, 2025 at 2:30 pm, the Division Bench of Justices Naveen Chawla and Shalinder Kaur of the Delhi High Court read out the verdict on the bail applications of Umar Khalid, Sharjeel Imam, Athar Khan, Khalid Saifi, Mohd Saleem Khan, Shifa-ur-Rehman, Meeran Haider, Gulfisha Fatima, and Shadab Ahmed. “All appeals are dismissed.”

Another coordinate bench of Justices Subramonium Prasad and Harish Shankar pronounced a separate order denying bail to Tasleem Ahmed.

The first order runs into 133 pages. The judgment begins by canonising the conspiratorial narrative into a statement of facts. The prosecution’s case rested on two evidentiary limbs:

1. Testimonies of “protected witnesses” – anonymous individuals who claim to have overheard the accused having secret meetings where they conspired to bring about violent riots
2. Circumstantial material – WhatsApp messages, distribution of “inciteful” pamphlets, public speeches calling for bandhs, chakka jam and non-cooperation, a “flurry of phone calls” after the riots

The Court relied on Gurwinder Singh vs State Of Punjab (2024), which held that “mere delay in trial pertaining to grave offences cannot be used as a ground to grant bail.” The ruling encapsulates the eight-point ‘Test for Rejection of Bail’ as laid down by Watali:

1. Meaning of “Prima facie true” (On the face of it, the materials must show the complicity)
2. Degree of Satisfaction (Lower that ordinary criminal law)
3. Reasoning necessary, but no detailed evaluation of evidence
4. Record a finding on broad probabilities, not based on proof beyond doubt
5. Limitation under Section 43D(5) applies from registration of FIR till conclusion of trial
6. Material on record must be analysed as a whole; no piecemeal analysis
7. Contents of documents to be presumed as true
8. Admissibility of documents relied upon by Prosecution cannot be questioned

The Court then analyses the accused’s roles in four parts, grouping individuals by protest site or broad organisational function. At the outset, this clubbing masks the absence of individualised evidence and allows the High Court to skirt its duty to test whether the allegations against each person were specific and particularised. Inferences are treated as facts, generic circumstances as evidence, and ten people are reduced to shadowy actors with undefined roles in a pre-narratavised conspiracy.

Sharjeel Imam and Umar Khalid

At the time of hearing, Sharjeel had been imprisoned for 2044 days and Umar for 1815 days. This does not seem to perturb the Court in the slightest, which instead zeroes in on the prosecution’s label that the two were the “intellectual architects” behind the alleged conspiracy. Nowhere does the judgment ask what it means to be an “intellectual architect,” or explain how mere membership of WhatsApp groups, distribution of pamphlets in college campuses, and untested testimony about meetings can be stretched into so far as to infer that two Muslim student activists masterminded communal violence in the national capital which resulted in an overwhelming proportion of Muslims being killed. It is worth noting here that Sharjeel had already been in custody since a month before the riots, and Umar had been under 24×7 police protection and electronic surveillance since 2018.

In Paragraphs 132-133, the Court refers to the ‘inflammatory speeches’ given by Sharjeel at Aligarh, Asanol, and Chakand and by Umar at Amravati. Aside from noting that they were ‘preaching to the masses by misleading them into believing that the CAA/NRC is an Anti-Muslim law’ – a political judgement that is utterly irrelevant to the legal question of culpability – the Court offers absolutely no textual or contextual analysis of the speeches. Absent even a surface-level inquiry into how the rhetoric allegedly crossed the threshold from protected speech under Article 19(1)(a) into incitement or terrorist conduct, the Court simply concludes that the role assigned by the prosecution “cannot be lightly brushed aside.”

“We will not respond to violence with violence. We will not respond to hate with hate. If they spread hate, we will respond to it by spreading love. If they beat us with lathis, we will hold aloft the tri-color. If they fire bullets, then we will hold the Constitution and raise our hands. If they jail us, we will go to jail happily singing, ‘Saarey Jahaan Se Acha, Hindustan Hamara.’ But we will not let you destroy our country.” – Umar Khalid (Speech at Amravati, February 2020)

A full transcript of Umar’s speech can be read here.

A portion of Sharjeel Imam’s speech at the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) was broadcast by electronic media channels and shared apparently out of context on social media to portray him as an Islamist pushing a secessionist agenda. The law draws a distinction between discussion, advocacy, and incitement – “Mere discussion or even advocacy of a particular cause howsoever unpopular is at the heart of Article 19(1)(a). It is only when such discussion or advocacy reaches the level of incitement that Article 19(2) kicks in” (Shreya Singhal v Union of India, 2015). There is no evidence to establish a causal link between Sharjeel’s speech and an overt act of violence.

Athar Khan, Shadab Ahmed, Abdul Khalid Saifi, and Mohd Saleem Khan

The State alleged that they were members of “various WhatsApp groups, which facilitated organized coordination of protests,” delivered “provocative speeches on religious lines,” and were present at “various meetings” on the night of February 23. The specific accusations against the four individuals are:

• Athar Khan and Shadab Ahmed: Were “in agreement” to destroy or cover Government-installed CCTV cameras so that they could “operate fearlessly.” This was based on statements by protected witnesses, testimony by police, and membership of the DPSG WhatsApp group.
• Saleem Khan: Dislocated a government CCTV camera with a stick-like object to attack the police and non-Muslims. CCTV footage allegedly showing him disabling a camera.
• Khalid Saifi: Raised funds and procured firearms for the conspiracy through NGO and NRI contacts. This is based on protected witness statements and CDR location data placing him at protests.

At the time of the hearings, Athar Khan had been in custody for 1889 days, Shadab Ahmed for 1976 days, Saleem Khan for 2002 days, and Khalid Saifi for 2016 days. Too many gaps in the prosecution’s case remain unanswered.

• Statements of the Protected witnesses were recorded after a considerable lapse of time from the registration of the FIR, and conveniently filled up the gaps in the prosecution case. The defence contends that these may be planted witnesses. At the stage of bail, their identities are not known to the defence.
• Police witnesses, including Constables and Head Constables, have given almost identical statements across all three FIRs. The defence contends that their testimonies were either templated or manufactured. At the stage of bail, the defence cannot cross-examine their testimonies.
• Mere presence in a WhatsApp group (not banned organizations) or attending meetings without any overt act or instigation, cannot be construed as participation in a criminal conspiracy.
  • Athar Khan and Shadab Ahmed have not posted a single message in the DPSG group demonstrating intention of blocking roads or causing riots.
  • The only overt act attributed to Saleem Khan is the turning away of a CCTV camera, for which he has already been granted bail in the FIR No. 60/2020.
  • There is no evidence of receipt of money by Khalid Saifi for the procurement of firearms. He is a resident of Chand Bagh and it cannot be suspicious that he was located in the area

Shifa-ur-Rehman and Meeran Haider

The prosecution claimed that Shifa-ur-Rehman and Meeran Haider managed protest sites across Delhi, attended meetings of the Jamia Coordination Committee (JCC) at the Alumni Association of Jamia Millia Islamia (AAJMI) office, and raised funds for the protests. The specific accusations against the two are:

• Shifa-ur-Rehman: As President of AAJMI, he generated fake bills to cover up money used in the conspiracy. The Court holds that “the possibility of misuse of the position … cannot be ruled out”
• Meeran Haider: Alleged to have delivered inflammatory speeches at the behest of Umar Khalid and raised funds for the riots

At the time of the hearings, Shifa had been in custody for 1956 days and Meeran for 1981 days. The judgment does not explain how passive presence in various meetings or association with lawful student and alumni organisations indicate intention, preparation, or participation in a terrorist act or conspiracy.

• The allegations of fund-collection or fraud are uncorroborated by forensic or direct evidence, and sustained solely based on vague and uncorroborated testimony of protected witnesses. Since the veracity of the prosecution witnesses can only be tested at trial, it is illogical to accept their statements as gospel truth at this stage.
• There are no allegations of AAJMI itself having engaged in any unlawful activities. Applying Watali’s standard of ‘broad probabilities,’ which “possibility” cannot be “ruled out”: Shifa “misusing” his Presidency of AAJMI, or belated statements from anonymous witnesses being unreliable?
• No speech or message has been attributed to the accused wherein they can be seen inciting or participating in violence. Several documents on record, including correspondence and public statements, show them consistently discouraging unlawful and disruptive activity.

Gulfisha Fatima

Gulfisha was accused of “playing a pivotal role in mobilising women for the protests” through the WhatsApp groups ‘Auraton ka Inqalab’ and ‘Warriors.’ She is also alleged to have blocked the road near Jafrabad Metro Station and instigated women to violence. She is further accused of receiving funds from co-accused Tahir Hussain to support the riots.

At the time of hearings, Gulfisha had been in custody for 1973 days.

• The chats of the ‘Auraton ka Inqalab’ group are not a part of the case record, and the chat of the ‘Warriors’ group pertain only to participation in legitimate peaceful protests
• There are no reports of chakka-jaam at Jafrabad metro station on February 22, 2020. The protest was peaceful and completely non-violent.
• The allegation that Hussain “handed over a bundle of notes” to Gulfisha for some illegal purpose stands solely on the testimony of Protected witness Saturn. The prosecution has not explained the amount allegedly given or the date on which such money was handed over.

On the Argument of Parity

All the nine accused drew the Court’s attention to the factual parity between their cases and the cases of Devangana Kalita, Natasha Narwal, and Asif Iqbal Tanha. All nine were dismissed, with the Court sheltering behind the Supreme Court’s caveat that the earlier Delhi High Court bail orders “shall not be treated as precedent.”

The injustice is the starkest in Gulfisha Fatima’s case, which is materially indistinguishable from Devangana and Natasha’s. The High Court takes great pains to draw a distinction, seizing on the absurd claim that Gulfisha’s creation of WhatsApp groups to mobilise women for protests set her apart.

The order in Sharjeel Imam & Ors v State of Delhi can be read here:

Tasleem Ahmed and the Justification for Prolonged Incarceration

In a separate order, the Delhi High Court denied bail to Tasleem Ahmed holding that since the maximum punishment prescribed under Sections 18 and 20 of the UAPA is life imprisonment, therefore prolonged incarceration “cannot be the sole factor for grant of bail.” This is a wilful perversion of Najeeb and a betrayal to the Constitutional promise of Liberty. At the time of the hearings, Tasleem Ahmed had been incarcerated for 1901 days.

The Court further held that “majority of delay is attributable to the accused.” In five years, Ahmed has not taken even a single day’s adjournment.

This argument was popularised earlier this year by former Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, and instantly picked up by the alt-right media who dismiss the prolonged pre-trial incarceration of the Delhi riots accused by claiming they are ‘forum shopping.’ CJP has debunked this myth, reporting how the glacial pace of the case has been systemically manufactured through institutional churn and prosecutorial obstruction. The bail pleas were filed in 2022, and were passed on to three different Benches. Twice, they had to be heard afresh since judges who reserved the verdict did not pronounce the order and were subsequently transferred. The pleas have been listed, on average, 60–70 times each. Listings were cancelled majorly because special benches failed to assemble (44 occasions for Imam alone) or judges were unavailable due to workload or roster conflicts^[6].

The order in Tasleem Ahmed v State of Delhi can be read here:

The Delhi High Court’s reasoning in both these orders is not Constitutionally-oriented, but outcome-oriented. The same Court which, in 2021, examined the merits of the case against the co-accused and found it bereft of any specific or particularised evidence not coated in “alarming and hyperbolic verbiage,” now claims to avoid the merits while uncritically leaning on the prosecution’s narrative to sustain detention.

What is to be Done?

After five years, the Delhi High Court was able to look the people of India in the eye and declare that the trial is “progressing at a natural pace,” rationalising that “a hurried trial would also be detrimental to the rights of both the Appellants and the State.”

The Delhi Riots Conspiracy case is one of ritualised silencing: incarceration without a speedy trial, prosecutions on conspiratorial hysteria, and courts filling in narrative gaps with inferences, assumptions, and outright absurdities. Sharjeel Imam and his co-accused are prisoners of the Hindutva State – hostages to the game of nation-building, and a warning to Indian Muslims and all marginalised people to hold their tongue.

But “for a human being not to speak is to die.” ^[7]

The UAPA is presented as the public’s weapon to defend society from terrorism. In reality, it is a distractionary alarm-bell to silence those who speak truth to power. The law does not stand above the social class-structure as a neutral protector, but preserves and serves the interests of the dominant and powerful class, embodied by the State and its machinery. By branding dissent as “terrorism,” the state shields the terror it unleashes everyday – through poverty, communal violence, dispossession, and repression.

The venomous web of the UAPA collapses the facade of ‘separation of powers,’ until the same script echoes from sub-inspector Arvind Kumar, to legal officers representing the state in constitutional courts and then, finally even significant sections of the judiciary. History will record that while the Indian judiciary and its judges searched hard to uncover communal provocation in Umar Khalid’s speech, they appeared blind to the seething hate and open calls to violence by those in positions of power, like the ‘honourable ministers’ Kapil Mishra, Anurag Thakur, and Parvesh Verma.

There have been persistent calls that a law such as the UAPA must be repealed. There have been strong appeals that political prisoners must be released. Above all, Courts must serve people’s justice. It is easy to succumb to hopelessness in the face of the mammoth State apparatus. At such a time, hope flickers through the words of Umar Khalid.

In a speech recorded before his arrest, Umar told us that “They are silencing us and putting us behind bars of jails, but they are also putting you behind bars of fear and falsehood.” Fear is an authoritarian state’s greatest weapon.

Remember this is what the State fears. Voices, like the ones at Shaheen Bagh. Alliances, like the ones at Elgar Parishad. Leaders, like Meeran Haider and Gulfisha Fatima.

Remember Umar’s final appeal. “Don’t be afraid. Speak up against injustice. Ask for the release of those who are being implicated in false cases. Raise your voice against every kind of tyranny.” 

How will we speak?

(The legal research team of CJP consists of lawyers and interns; this legal resource has been worked on by Raaz)

Footnotes

1. Abdul Rahman, ‘Five years since Delhi was set on fire by the right and the victims were blamed,’ (People’s Dispatch, 22 February 2025)
2. Betwa Sharma, ‘How Kapil Mishra Allegedly Broke The Law, Was Never Prosecuted & Became Delhi’s Law Minister’ (Article 14, 20 March 2025)
3. CJP Team, ‘Delhi Riots 2020: Stalled justice & the architecture of indefinite detention, FIR 59/2020 in perspective’ (Citizens for Justice and Peace, July 2025)
4. Gautam Bhatia, ‘A Graveyard for Civil Rights Jurisprudence: The Devangana Kalita Bail Order’ (ICLP Blog, May 2023)
5. Ibid.
6. Supra, 3
7. Varavara Rao, ‘The Word is the World’ (Captive Imagination)

^[1] Abdul Rahman, ‘Five years since Delhi was set on fire by the right and the victims were blamed,’ (People’s Dispatch, 22 February 2025)

^[2] Betwa Sharma, ‘How Kapil Mishra Allegedly Broke The Law, Was Never Prosecuted & Became Delhi’s Law Minister’ (Article 14, 20 March 2025)

^[3] CJP Team, ‘Delhi Riots 2020: Stalled justice & the architecture of indefinite detention, FIR 59/2020 in perspective’ (Citizens for Justice and Peace, July 2025)

^[4] Gautam Bhatia, ‘A Graveyard for Civil Rights Jurisprudence: The Devangana Kalita Bail Order’ (ICLP Blog, May 2023)

^[5] Ibid

^[6] Supra, 3

^[7] Varavara Rao, ‘The Word is the World’ (Captive Imagination)

Related:

UAPA: Delhi HC denies bail, Umar Khalid’s Incarceration to Continue

Delhi court rejects application to handcuff Umar Khalid & Khalid Saifi

Umar Khalid’s speech prima facie not acceptable, obnoxious: Delhi HC

Protest was secular, chargesheet is communal: Dr. Umar Khalid’s counsel

Umar Khalid bail hearing: Counsel points out “cooked up” witnesses

Chargesheet against me looks like a film script: Umar Khalid to court

The post The Word is the World: How the Delhi riots conspiracy case ritualises silence appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The case pertains to Lokesh Kumar Solanki, alias Rajput, who was found guilty under Sections 153A and 505 of the Indian Penal Code, which penalise promoting enmity between different religious groups and circulating rumours or statements likely to cause public mischief.

Delivering the sentencing order on July 8, 2025, Additional Sessions Judge Parveen Singh of the Karkardooma Courts said that Solanki had “added fuel to the already simmering tensions” in February 2020 by disseminating inflammatory messages aimed at stoking hatred and inciting violence against the Muslim community. These actions, the judge noted, were especially grave in the backdrop of communal riots then engulfing North East Delhi.

“The fact, that during the tense period of February 2020, the convict had added fuel to the already simmering tensions by spreading messages which were intended to promote enmity and hatred for Muslim community and induced the members of the group to commit crime against Muslim, calls for no leniency and makes the offence very serious in nature.” (Para 7)

Despite the seriousness of the offence, the court acknowledged that Solanki had already been incarcerated for over three years, the maximum sentence provided under the relevant sections. Consequently, the judge concluded that justice would be served by awarding the maximum sentence but ordering his release since no further imprisonment could legally be imposed.

“However, the fact remains that convict has already undergone the imprisonment of more than 03 years which is the maximum punishment which could be awarded for offences punishable u/s 153-A/ 505 IPC.” (Para 8)

Arguments raised

Prosecution sought maximum sentence: During the sentencing hearing, Special Public Prosecutor Saleem Ahmed urged the court to impose the maximum punishment under both provisions, citing the content of Solanki’s messages and their intended communal impact. He argued that Solanki’s conduct was calculated to disturb public order and warranted no clemency.

Defence pleads for compassion: Appearing for the convict, Advocate Nishant Kumar Tyagi highlighted Solanki’s youth, his family responsibilities, particularly his aged parents, and the fact that he had already spent more than three years behind bars awaiting trial and judgment. He requested that any sentence be ordered to run concurrently and that the court take into account the period of pre-conviction custody.

Order of the Court: Sentence imposed, fine levied

After hearing both sides, the Court sentenced Solanki as follows:

• Three years’ simple imprisonment under Section 153A IPC, along with a fine of ₹25,000. In default of payment, an additional six months’ simple imprisonment.
• Three years’ simple imprisonment under Section 505 IPC, along with another fine of ₹25,000. In default, six more months’ simple imprisonment.

The sentences will run concurrently, and the convict was granted the benefit of Section 428 CrPC, which allows set-off for time already spent in custody.

Since Solanki has already served more than the maximum prescribed period of imprisonment, the court ordered his release, subject to payment of the total fine of ₹50,000. The order notes that the fine has been paid.

Broader Context: A message on hate speech

This case is one of the few successful convictions in connection with incitement to violence during the 2020 Delhi riots, which left over 50 people dead and hundreds injured. The court’s strong words reaffirm that hate speech, particularly during periods of communal unrest, will not be treated as a benign offence.

At the same time, the order reflects the tension in India’s criminal justice system between protracted trial processes and the need for proportionate sentencing. Though the court recognised the gravity of Solanki’s offence, it was legally constrained from ordering any further imprisonment.

The order of the Delhi Court may be read here.

Related:

How the Delhi riots case remains stagnant with close to a dozen student leaders incarcerated

“This Means FIR”: Delhi Court orders further investigation, FIR against BJP leader Kapil Mishra five years after Delhi riots

5 Years of Delhi Riots: Some Punished, Some Rewarded!

Delhi Police on Trial: Three court orders reveal collusion, cover-ups, and custodial torture by police officers during 2020 Delhi riots

The post Delhi Court sentences riots accused for promoting hatred against Muslims, sentences him to 3 years in custody appeared first on SabrangIndia.

It has now been more than five years. She has not been convicted of any crime. And yet, her incarceration endures – not as a sentence handed down by a court, but as an unending wait, sustained by a trial that never arrives.

§

Gulfisha Fatima has now been imprisoned for over 1,900 days.

This year, on the fifth anniversary of her incarceration, a solidarity week was organised for her. Artists created posters. Writers wrote essays. We shared her story again, in public and private spaces, hoping that her name does not disappear under the weight of silence.

I mailed her a letter with the printed posters created in solidarity with her by a few artists – drawings that said ‘Free Gulfisha’. Not as a campaign or a legal demand, but a gesture of care. The kind of solidarity that says: you are not forgotten, and they haven’t succeeded in making us forget.

But the prison did not deliver the letter. The posters, it seems, were “unacceptable.” Too political, or perhaps too hopeful.

What is the state afraid of? Posters, apparently.

Between censorship and care

This wasn’t the first time something in my letters had been censored. I remember the first one I received from Gul – whole phrases had been erased with a white marker. I couldn’t make sense of what she was trying to say, or who she was referring to. Later, a friend explained that whenever the jail authorities find something objectionable, they simply blot it out with correction fluid.

What were the words being erased with whitener? Underneath those erased spaces were stories from Gul’s PadhoPadhao program – narratives about how, despite describing herself as impatient, she had become the teacher her mother always said she would be. These were letters tracing how incarceration had begun to reshape her: how she was being pushed into roles she had never imagined or wanted for herself – teaching, learning to make jewellery, sitting still for hours, enduring solitary confinement for days on end.

After that, every letter I wrote became an exercise in evading censorship. I tried to fill the pages with stories and sentences that wouldn’t be silenced. I told her about my vegetable patch, my cat, my father and my city. Each letter began to feel like those school assignments: Write a letter to your friend describing your day.

Except here, the state was assigning the prompt.

How do you write about what matters, without inviting erasure?

So I asked her questions instead, like where would you like to go on a holiday once you are out? Have you seen a beach?

She wrote back to say she’d never seen a beach. That she couldn’t imagine what it felt like to think of a ‘vacation’ much less stand at the edge of the sea, feet buried in the sand.

I started searching for photos that might convey the quiet joy of that moment – that stillness, that release. I thought of the beach photos by my friend Varun, a Chennai-based photographer who describes his work as an exploration of spaces – streets, beaches, rooftops etc. His work doesn’t draw attention to itself, and yet it stays with you – the quiet texture of everyday life, without turning people’s lives into a spectacle.

It reminded me of something Annie Ernaux gestures toward in her writing – that the everyday is never neutral (Jacobin, 2022). That to record it is not indulgent, but defiant. A way of refusing the erasure that time, power or distraction so often imposes. To linger on the mundane is also to affirm that it mattered.

And perhaps that’s why I thought of those photographs, of Gul’s life in prison, and of Annie Ernaux – because all three are preoccupied, in their own ways, with the dignity and weight of the ordinary.

I requested a copy of the photos and sent it to her; and they got delivered. After the posters didn’t make it through the jail bars, I was curious (and grateful) how the previous photos had made the cut. I realised that Varun’s photo, in its quiet ordinariness, slipped past the censors likely because it did not look political. The state missed how tenderness, too, can be a radical refusal to forget or abandon. It helped Gul escape from her immediate surroundings for a minute.

She loved the photos and wrote back saying: “I crave normal moments like these. To me, even ‘normal’ now feels like a gift.”

And in the midst of all this, somehow, our friendship grew.

We don’t come from the same city. We weren’t born into the same caste, religion or class. We didn’t go to the same universities or share any obvious markers of a shared world. We are not the same. One of us is in prison. The other is writing this from outside. And yet, in a time when it is often claimed that people from different backgrounds cannot truly understand each other, our friendship has become something rare and deeply cherished.

I remember a time, about a year and a half ago, when I was going through a rough patch. My letters to her grew infrequent, scattered, weighed down by everything I couldn’t bring myself to say. In response, Gul wrote back – gently, with concern. “Are you okay? she asked. It’s unlike you to be so quiet.”

Tucked inside her letter was a small keychain she had bought for me with her prison wages. It was her way of reaching across the bars, of being there for me in the only way she could. That letter marked a quiet turning – an unexpected tenderness. Despite everything she was enduring, it was Gul who took on the larger share of care.

And no matter how many words are blotted out, how many letters are intercepted – this is something the state cannot erase.

Silence as strategy: Censorship and carceral control in India

Writing from prison is never just a personal exercise – it is political. And it is subjected to opaque, unchecked censorship. Prison authorities are granted sweeping discretion over what detainees can send or receive, with little public accountability. While the Prisoners Act of 1894 and the Model Prison Manual of 2016 formally permit letters and reading material, these rights are routinely curtailed by vague provisions allowing officials to withhold anything deemed “objectionable” or “a threat to discipline or security”.

Rule 43.17 empowers superintendents to intercept letters “likely to endanger prison security.” But what qualifies as a threat remains undefined. There is no obligation to document decisions, no route for appeal. Letters disappear. No explanation is given. No one is notified. This is censorship by silence – absence masquerading as order.

For those charged under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), this regime of erasure becomes more insidious. Since its enactment in 1967 – and especially after amendments in 2008 and 2019 – the law has enabled prolonged detention without trial, often on speculative evidence. The 2019 amendment allows individuals – not just organisations – to be labelled “terrorists,” vastly expanding the scope of pre-emptive criminalisation.

Under Section 43D(5), bail is nearly impossible. Judges must accept prosecution claims at face value, reversing the burden of proof. Accusation becomes punishment. Professor Ujjwal Kumar Singh (2007) calls this a “detention democracy” – where the rule of law coexists with a parallel regime of suspension. Rights exist on paper but remain materially inaccessible.

This is not just the condition of those charged under UAPA – it is the logic of the prison itself. Surveillance, solitary confinement and disrupted communication are not exceptions but embedded features of carceral life. For some, especially political prisoners, these controls may be intensified. But often, the inverse is also true: ordinary undertrials, those without public attention or legal support, may experience even deeper abandonment.

What results is more than legal incarceration – it is an emotional severance. Books may get denied. Clothes for Eid from friends get denied. Letters are redacted or withheld. Care is filtered through bureaucracy.

The prison becomes a space of quiet erasure – where silence is institutionalised, and the threads of memory and connection are gradually worn thin.

What it means to remember

The refusal to deliver the letter with posters was not a surprise. Many of us who write to political prisoners have faced similar outcomes. We write, we send, we wait. Often the message arrives months later. Sometimes never. Sometimes the prisoner is told. Sometimes not. But this refusal still matters. Because it shows how deeply the state fears memory. To make a poster or to write a letter or to read her poems is to assert that solidarity is still possible – despite the fences and the years that pass.

Even when the message doesn’t arrive, it has already done its work.

When we speak of repression, we often speak of grand spectacles – raids, arrests, bans, surveillance. But power also works in small, daily gestures. The unmailed letter. The returned book. The silence from the prison gate. These small gestures are how repression is normalised.

They create a slow withdrawal not just from the prisoner, but from the political itself. Families and friends, unsure of what is safe, stop sending things that can be returned, stop writing certain words or phrases so that the letter does not go undelivered. Artists, afraid of being watched, stop drawing faces.

The prisoner does not just disappear from view – the effort is to gradually erase their side of the narrative in the public’s moral and imaginative landscape. Over time, the very idea of dissent becomes fragile, unspoken. The blank space is no longer just a person. It is a society trained to look away.

​​Perhaps, this is the quiet labour of solidarity: to resist forgetting. To write, to remember, to insist on presence even when presence is policed. Communication is controlled because it keeps the political identity alive.

A woman who writes, who remembers, or who is remembered – becomes dangerous. She unsettles the state’s narrative of isolation. Because the solitary prisoner is a myth; these women resist through community. Their letters become pamphlets. Their poems cross the boundaries of identity and confinement. Their art – sent or received – becomes a slogan, becomes memory. They remain in the movement even behind bars.

It is this continuity – of thought, of political belonging, of being claimed and held by others – that the state truly fears.

Anuradha Banerji is an activist and an independent researcher.

Courtesy: The Wire

The post How Prisons Become Spaces of Quiet Erasure appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Vaibhav Chaurasia of the Rouse Avenue Courts orally remarked, “this means FIR,” indicating that the court’s directive for further investigation effectively necessitates the registration of a First Information Report against Mishra. The judge observed that a cognizable offence had been established concerning one of the incidents detailed in the complaint, warranting deeper scrutiny.

The court stated that the evidence presented by the prosecution clearly placed Mishra at the scene and that “all the things were corroborating.” It further noted that Mishra, during interrogation, admitted to being in the area and acknowledged that people had gathered around him, many of whom he knew. This admission, the court stated, “fortifies the allegations of the complainant.”

Significantly, the court pointed out that Mishra’s statement was not framed in terms of support for or opposition to the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) but rather in explicitly communal terms. The court noted that Mishra “had not framed his statement under ‘Pro-CAA or Anti-CAA’ but rather ‘DUSRI TARAF MUSLIM’ with the distinction of us and them, wherein them is ‘DUSRI TARAF MUSLIM.’” The judge remarked that such rhetoric “clearly establishes sides and requires investigation to unearth the truth.”

As per a report in LiveLaw, the court further observed that Mishra’s presence in North-East Delhi a day before the riots, which he himself admitted, could not be ignored. Additionally, it directed that senior police officer DCP Ved Prakash Surya be examined, following allegations by the complainant that Surya had threatened protesters, saying, “If you did not stop this protest, then consequence will happen here that you will be killed.” The judge stressed that “his personal interrogation is necessary,” adding, “The series of events reveals that perhaps, if allegations of complainant are found to be true, then DCP Ved Prakash Surya knows something which this Judiciary does not.”

At the same time, the court stated that if the complainant’s allegations were proven false, the Delhi Police would be at liberty to take action under Section 182 of the IPC for filing false information. It also directed the DCP of North-East Delhi to ensure that the order for further investigation was sent to the appropriate police station within its jurisdiction. Failure to comply, the court warned, would hold the DCP legally accountable.

The Delhi Police has been ordered to file a compliance report by April 16, 2025, the next date of hearing. Petitioner Mohammad Ilyas was represented by Advocate Mehmood Pracha, while Special Public Prosecutor Amit Prasad appeared for the Delhi Police.

This directive represents a major step towards accountability in the 2020 Delhi riots case, even if it is beginning 5 years down the lane. Despite the political climate and prior reluctance to act against influential figures, the court’s insistence on further investigation highlights the need for an impartial and thorough probe into the events leading to the communal violence.

Details of the complaint against Delhi Law Minister Kapil Mishra

A Delhi court was hearing a complaint filed by Mohammad Ilyas, seeking an investigation into the alleged role of BJP leader and Delhi Minister Kapil Mishra in the 2020 North-East Delhi riots. The plea, however, was met with strong opposition from the Delhi Police, who argued that Mishra was being falsely implicated as part of a “well-planned conspiracy.”

The complainant, Mohammad Ilyas, sought the registration of an FIR against Mishra, along with then SHO of Dayalpur police station and five other individuals, including BJP MLA Mohan Singh Bisht and former BJP MLAs Jagdish Pradhan and Satpal Sansad.

According to Ilyas, on February 23, 2020, he personally witnessed Mishra and his associates blocking a road and destroying the handcarts of street vendors. He also alleged that the then Deputy Commissioner of Police (North-East) and other officers were present alongside Mishra as he issued warnings to anti-CAA protesters, demanding they vacate the area or face dire consequences.

Ilyas had moved the court in December 2024, urging an inquiry into the roles of Mishra and six others in the riots, which resulted in 53 deaths and over 700 injuries. In March 2025, the Delhi Police reiterated their stance, arguing that Mishra’s role had already been investigated and “nothing incarcerating” had been found.

In his petition, Ilyas specifically named Mishra, Mustafabad MLA and Deputy Speaker Mohan Singh Bisht, the then DCP (North-East), the then SHO of Dayalpur police station, and former BJP legislator Jagdish Pradhan, holding them responsible for inciting the riots. As reported by The Hindu, Ilyas stated that he saw Mishra and his associates obstructing a road in Kardampuri and damaging street vendors’ stalls. Additionally, he alleged that the former North-East DCP and several police officers stood by as Mishra issued threats to anti-CAA demonstrators.

Ilyas also accused the former Dayalpur SHO and others of vandalising mosques across North-East Delhi, further intensifying concerns over the role of law enforcement in the communal violence.

Delhi Police opposes plea seeking FIR

On March 6, 2025, the Delhi Police filed a written submission before a Delhi court, opposing a plea that sought the registration of an FIR against BJP leader and Delhi Minister Kapil Mishra for his alleged involvement in the 2020 North-East Delhi riots.

The police contended that the complaint, filed by Mohammad Ilyas, was part of a “well-planned conspiracy” to falsely implicate Mishra in the riots. They asserted that the BJP leader had no role in the violence and was being deliberately framed.

As part of their argument, the prosecution referred to conversations from various WhatsApp groups, including the Delhi Protest Support Group (DPSG), alleging that certain individuals had orchestrated a social media campaign against Mishra. The police claimed that the hashtag #ArrestKapilMishra was being used strategically to construct a misleading narrative around his involvement in the riots.

Additionally, the Delhi Police maintained that Mishra’s alleged role had already been investigated and that no incriminating evidence was found against him. In an earlier submission from October 2024, the police argued that the riots were the outcome of a “pre-planned conspiracy” designed to incite violence in Muslim-majority areas, particularly around mosques and religious sites. The goal, they claimed, was to escalate “protests” into “Chakkajaam” (road blockades) once a critical mass of demonstrators had gathered.

The police further stated that misleading WhatsApp messages were circulated at the time, falsely alleging that a mob led by Mishra had initiated the violence. They insisted that these claims were part of an attempt to create a false narrative and implicate him in the riots.

Opposition demands resignation of Kapil Mishra following court’s order

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Congress on April 1, 2025, demanded the resignation of Delhi Law Minister Kapil Mishra after a city court directed the registration of an FIR to investigate his alleged role in the 2020 North-East Delhi riots.

Addressing a press conference, Delhi AAP president Saurabh Bharadwaj stated that sufficient evidence of Mishra’s involvement was already in the public domain and called for his immediate arrest. “Mishra should resign and be arrested, as the court has ordered an FIR to probe his role in the riots. For the sake of morality, he should step down, just as others accused in the case have been arrested,” Bharadwaj asserted.

As per the report of Times of India, Bharadwaj further criticised the delay in legal proceedings, pointing out that it took over five years for the judicial system to act on the case. Bharadwaj also alleged that a judge who had previously directed the police to take action in the case was transferred to another state.

AAP’s chief spokesperson Priyanka Kakkar echoed the demand, questioning why Mishra was being treated differently from others accused in the riots. “Every other accused in the Delhi riots case has been arrested. Why is Kapil Mishra an exception?” she asked.

Delhi Congress president Devender Yadav also called for Mishra’s resignation, citing the court’s findings. “The Rouse Avenue court has established that there is a cognisable offence against him. This is a serious matter, and if there is any sense of morality left, he should resign immediately to allow for a fair and independent investigation,” Yadav said.

Delhi riots case and Mishra’s incendiary speech

The 2020 North-East Delhi riots: The 2020 Delhi riots, which took place between 24 and 26 February, led to significant violence in North-East Delhi, resulting in 53 deaths, over 500 injuries, and extensive property damage. Ironically, while a majority of those killed and harmed were Muslims, most of those who have been arrested for their role during the riots are also Muslims. Several student leaders and activists, including Umar Khalid, Gulfisha Fatima, and Sharjeel Imam, were accused by the police of conspiring to incite the riots. These remain in jail, with the trial yet to begin. However, a fact-finding team formed by the Delhi Minorities Commission concluded that the violence was “planned and targeted” and held BJP leader Kapil Mishra responsible for triggering it.

Mishra’s alleged role in inciting violence: Delhi Cabinet Minister and BJP leader Kapil Mishra is accused of provoking violence through a speech delivered at Maujpur Chowk on February 23, 2020. In his speech, he issued an ultimatum, demanding that the police clear anti-CAA protest sites within three days or risk intervention by his supporters.

The fact-finding report had noted that “violence started in different pockets almost immediately after the short speech of Shri Kapil Mishra on 23 February, 2020, at Maujpur, in which he openly called for forcefully removing the protestors at Jafrabad in North-East Delhi.” It further highlighted Mishra’s explicit warning: “After that, we will not listen to the police if roads are not cleared after three days…”

The committee criticised the Delhi Police for failing to act against Mishra, despite senior officer DCP Ved Prakash Surya standing beside him during the speech. The report stated that “the open admission of ‘not listening’ to the police and extra-legal tactics should have been seen by the authorities as inciting violence.” The committee concluded that by not apprehending Mishra, the police “failed to take the first and most immediate preventive step needed to avoid violence and protect life and property.”

Legal challenges against Mishra and other political leaders: Multiple legal petitions have been filed seeking an FIR against Kapil Mishra for inciting violence. Human rights defender Harsh Mander had petitioned for an FIR against Mishra under Section 153 of the IPC (provocation for riot) and Section 125 of the Representation of People’s Act (causing ill will between communities for electoral purposes). These sections do not require prior government sanction.

Similarly, CPI (M) leader Brinda Karat has been pursuing legal action against politicians whose speeches allegedly incited violence against anti-CAA-NRC-NPR protestors. She approached the Delhi High Court after her plea to register an FIR against Union Minister Anurag Thakur and BJP MP Pravesh Verma for their alleged hate speeches was dismissed by a trial court on technical grounds. The trial court had ruled that a prior sanction from the central government was required before proceeding. Karat challenged this ruling, arguing that such procedural objections should be addressed early to prevent unnecessary delays in cases involving hate speech. (Details may be read here.)

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The post “This Means FIR”: Delhi Court orders further investigation, FIR against BJP leader Kapil Mishra five years after Delhi riots appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Where is justice lost…what happened in these five years? Many innocents are still behind bars and many accused are still roaming free. One of them has even become an MLA and minister on a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ticket.

Five years ago, between February 23 and February 26, 2020, a conspiracy was hatched to light a communal fire in Delhi. The north-eastern part of the capital city was made the target of this attack.

About 53 people lost their lives in this communal violence. Hundreds were injured. There was huge loss of life and property in the violence that lasted for four days. Many houses and shops were burnt to ashes.

In common parlance, we call this a ‘riot’, but if the right words are used, it was an attack. A revenge against the Shaheen Bagh movement against the Citizenship Amendment Act or CAA. Statistics testify this.

Delhi Police figures say that among those killed, 40 were Muslims and 13 were Hindus.

Unfortunately, the government and the mainstream media largely reported one-sided stories and blamed the Muslim community for this violence. This is what is being propagated even today.

As per the Special Cell and Crime Branch of Delhi Police, there was a “deep conspiracy” behind the Delhi riots, the “foundation of which was laid” during the anti-CAA and NRC protests in 2019.

This conspiracy has been mentioned in case number 59/2020. Delhi Police considers former JNU student leader, Umar Khalid, as the “mastermind” of the Delhi violence.

Special Public Prosecutor Amit Prasad has argued that the violence was part of a conspiracy to create trouble during the visit of then US President Donald Trump to India.

The violence started in Jaffrabad in North East Delhi, where women were staging a sit-in protest against the CAA on the Seelampur-Jaffrabad-Maujpur Road.

At that time, the freshly minted BJP leader, Kapil Mishra (who had switched over from the Aam Aadmi Party), called upon Delhi Police to clear the streets, and threatening to do so himself with the help of his supporters. It is after this that the violence broke out.

Recall that despite all their efforts, BJP had badly lost in the Assembly elections held in February 2020.  Many analysts say that the stunning defeat had flustered BJP. (This year that defeat has been avenged. After 27 years, BJP has once again come to power in Delhi with full majority.)

The backdrop of the communal violence had already been created, but ultimately it is innocent people who became its victims.

In 2022, four former judges and a former Home Secretary had released a fact-finding report on the reality of the Delhi violence. The report had raised serious questions on the investigation by Delhi Police. Also, strong comments were made on the role of Union Home Ministry, Delhi government and the media.

The fact-finding report also found that speeches made by BJP leaders like Kapil Mishra had also played a role in instigating people, which led to the violence.

Social activist Harsh Mander had even filed a petition in Delhi’s Patiala Court saying that an FIR should be registered against Kapil Mishra. This petition is still pending in the court.

Notably, in July 2020, Delhi Police had told the Delhi High Court that no evidence had been found against Kapil Mishra and other BJP leaders’ speeches having instigated the violence.

The same Kapil Mishra has now become an MLA and minister by contesting the recent Delhi Assembly elections from Karawal Nagar on a BJP ticket. But there is no discussion in the media about his role in the 2020 communal violence.

According to various media reports, the police have registered a total of 758 FIRs related to the violence.

Some reports published in 2024 said a total of 2,619 people had been arrested, out of which 2,094 people are out on bail.

The court has so far found only 47 people guilty and has acquitted 183 people. Cases against 75 people have been dismissed due to lack of sufficient evidence.

Delhi Police has so far arrested at least 24 people, of which 10 have been released on bail in the case of Head Constable Ratan Lal, who was killed in the line of duty during the Delhi violence.

Also, the 11 accused arrested in the murder case of Ankit Sharma, who worked in the Intelligence Bureau, are still in jail. Sharma’s body was found in a drain in Chand Bagh on February 26, 2020.

Notably, the fact-finding report has put its finger on  another accused in the Delhi violence —  Delhi Police. Questions have been raised on the role of Delhi Police in allowing these riots to happen and for inaction and delay in stopping the violence. Besides, Delhi Police have also been accused on brutalities.

Hearing in a case related to the Delhi riots in September 2024, a court had acquitted 10 accused persons, raising questions on the ‘theory’ of Delhi Police. All the accused belonged to the Muslim community. They were accused of attacking a house and a shop in Gokulpuri police station area of ​​North East Delhi.

Additional Sessions Judge Pulastya Pramchala of Delhi’s Karkardooma Court had said that “suspicions over the allegations against the accused are not beyond doubt.”

During these four-five years, there were many such occasions during the hearing in the court, when the court made harsh remarks on the Delhi Police and described the level of their investigation as poor.

In August, 2023, while hearing the arrest of three people in the case of rioting in FIR No. 71/20 case of Dayalpur Police Station, Karkaduma Court had commented that the incidents had not been properly and completely investigated. It noted that the charge sheet in the case had been filed with prejudice in a bid to hide the mistakes made in the beginning.

Because of this kind of investigation and attitude of the police, many youth are still languishing in jail.

In November 2024, the Supreme Court refused to grant bail to Delhi riots accused Gulfisha Fatima, but asked the Delhi High Court to hear her bail petition soon. Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for Gulfisha, had said that she had been in jail for four years, and her bail petition had been pending in the High Court for a long time.

Earlier, on October 25, 2024, the Supreme Court had given a similar order in the case of another riot accused, Sharjeel Imam.

However, in March 2022 itself, councillor Ishrat Jahan, an accused in the violence, got bail. She was arrested by the Special Cell of Delhi Police under UAPA (Unlawful Activities Prevention Act).

The bail petition was filed in the court on behalf of former Congress councilor Ishrat Jahan, which said that the police did not have a single evidence against her.

Earlier, in June 2021, Delhi High Court had granted bail to Pinjra Tod activists Devangana Kalita, Natasha Narwal and Jamia student Asif Iqbal Tanha, who were arrested under UAPA Sections on charges of rioting.

At that time the High Court had said that giving inciting speeches or blocking roads is not unusual when there is widespread opposition to the actions of the government and Parliament. Even if we assume that the alleged inflammatory speeches, ‘chakka jam’, inciting women to protest and other acts, even if these violate the limits of the right to peaceful protest given in the Constitution, the act cannot be termed as a terrorist act, its conspiracy or its preparation.

Alas, Umar Khalid did not get bail or such comments.

Delhi Police’s Special Cell and Crime Branch consider Khalid to be the ‘mastermind’ of the Delhi violence. He has been in jail since September 2020. He has been charged with terrorism, rioting and criminal conspiracy under UAPA. The trial in this case has not started yet.

Umar Khalid’s bail plea has been rejected twice by two different courts, and hearings on his case have been adjourned umpteen times.

Khalid’s bail plea remained pending in the Supreme Court from May 2023 to January 2024, but the debate on it could not be started even once. After this, he withdrew his bail application from the Supreme Court and went back to the trial court.

On February 20, 2025, Khalid’s bail plea was heard in the Delhi High Court. During the hearing, his lawyer told the HC that merely being a member of a WhatsApp group was not evidence of involvement in any crime.

His lawyer Trideep Pais told the court that Khalid had been in custody as an undertrial for a long time. He said that the delay in the trial was also a reason due to which Khalid should get bail. The senior advocate argued that on the basis of equality with the four accused in this case who have been granted bail, Khalid should also be granted bail.

The bench headed by Justice Naveen Chawla has now ordered the next hearing on Khalid’s bail plea on March 4.

So, if we look at how justice has progressed in these five years, it can be said that while one set of accused —  Umar Khalid or Gulfisha or Sharjeel Imam — has not got bail yet, And one of the accused (although Delhi Police does not consider him an accused) Kapil Mishra has become an MLA and the Law and Justice Minister in the Delhi government. Along with this, he has got charge of Development, Art and Culture Department, Language Department, Tourism Department, Labour Department and Employment Department.

The session of the new Delhi Assembly has started. It would be fitting if a report on the progress of investigation in Delhi riots is tabled so that the country knows what the police under Home Minister Amit Shah did for justice in these five years.

(Translated from the original article published on Newsclick’s Hindi website)

Courtesy: Newsclick

The post 5 Years of Delhi Riots: Some Punished, Some Rewarded! appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Perhaps most disturbing is the court’s order directing the registration of an FIR against the former SHO of Jyoti Nagar police station for his alleged role in the custodial torture of riot victims. A widely circulated video had already shown police officers beating Muslim men and forcing them to chant nationalistic and religious slogans, yet no action was taken until judicial intervention. The complainant, Mohd. Wasim, recounted being brutally assaulted, thrown onto a pile of injured men, and later coerced into signing false statements. The court’s findings make it clear that the police did not just fail to protect riot victims; they actively targeted them. These three rulings, taken together, expose a grim reality—law enforcement in Delhi was not just ineffective during the riots, but in many cases, became complicit in deepening the communal divide. While the courts have intervened, these judgments also serve as a reminder of how easily institutions can be weaponised when accountability is absent.

1. The shielding of BJP MLA Kapil Mishra: Delhi Police’s selective investigation

One of the most critical observations made by the court came in the case involving BJP leader Kapil Mishra, whose incendiary speech on February 23, 2020, is widely believed to have instigated violence in North-East Delhi. The complainant, Mohd. Wasim, alleged that he saw Mishra leading an unlawful assembly and firing gunshots at protestors. However, despite these serious allegations, the police’s Action Taken Report (ATR) was completely silent on Mishra’s role. Through his order issued on January 18, 2025, Judicial Magistrate Udbhav Kumar Jain of the Karkardooma Court pointed out that the investigating officer (IO) had either deliberately avoided probing Mishra’s involvement or actively sought to cover it up. This observation reinforces the perception that Delhi Police has, at times, acted as a shield for politically connected individuals rather than as an impartial law enforcement body.

In the order, the Magistrate observed, “it seems that the IO was more concerned about the police officials and either he failed to make inquiry against the alleged accused no.3 (Kapil Mishra), or he tried to cover up the allegations against the said accused. The ATR is completely silent qua him (Mishra).”

“The principle behind Section 153A IPC is to preserve religious/communal harmony and it is the duty of every citizen that while he enjoys his right to express himself, he preserves religious harmony. This indeed is the positive aspect of Secularism,” the judge said in its order.

The court further stressed that public figures like Mishra bear a higher responsibility to act within the constitutional framework and not make statements that disrupt communal harmony. This order underscores how the police failed in their duty to investigate a politician accused of inciting violence while aggressively pursuing cases against others.

“The alleged accused no.3 (Kapil Mishra) is in public eyes and is prone to more scrutiny; such persons in the society direct the course/mood of the public at large and thus, responsible behaviour within the ambit of the Constitution of India is expected from such persons,” the Court said.

The order may be read here.

2. Dubious prosecutions: Acquittal of Six Accused Due to Flimsy Evidence

In another case, on February 3, 2025, the Additional Sessions Judge Pulastya Pramachala acquitted six individuals accused of being part of a riotous mob that engaged in arson and destruction in Gokalpuri. The court found serious lapses in the prosecution’s case, particularly the unreliable testimonies of two police witnesses, Assistant Sub-Inspectors Vanvir and Jahangir. The officers claimed to have identified the accused in videos but were only examined in December 2020—almost ten months after the riots. The court noted that if the officers had already known the accused, as they claimed, there was no need for them to identify them in videos later. Additionally, one of them failed to even recognise three accused individuals in court.

“If they knew the names of the accused persons and if they had seen these persons in the mob of rioters, then there was no need and occasion for them to identify the accused persons in any video,” it said.

This case illustrates how the Delhi Police sought to frame individuals using questionable evidence while failing to investigate more pressing allegations against political figures and police personnel. The delay in examining key witnesses and the lack of credible identification further point to the possibility of wrongful arrests and politically motivated prosecutions.

“This delay in examining these two police officials, who were posted in the same police station, certainly casts doubt over the veracity of the prosecution’s case. The investigating officer did not tender any reason for such delay in recording the statement of these witnesses,” the Court said, as per a report in Bar&Bench.

3. Police complicity in custodial violence: FIR ordered against former SHO

Perhaps the most egregious case of police misconduct came in the case involving the custodial torture of riot victims, including Faizan, a young Muslim man who later died from his injuries. A widely circulated video from the riots showed Delhi Police personnel beating injured Muslim men and forcing them to sing the national anthem and chant slogans like “Jai Shri Ram” and “Vande Mataram.” The brutality captured in the footage was emblematic of the communal bias and impunity with which certain officers acted during the riots.

The complainant, Mohd. Wasim, provided a chilling account of how he was beaten, thrown onto a pile of other injured victims, and later taken to Jyoti Nagar police station, where the then-SHO and other officers continued to torture them. He was allegedly forced to sign false statements and give misleading accounts to the media under police pressure. Despite such grave allegations, the Delhi Police refused to act until a court intervened. In its order, Magistrate Udbhav Kumar Jain ordered the registration of an FIR against the former SHO under serious charges, including wrongful confinement, criminal intimidation, and deliberate religious insult.

“Clearly, the SHO PS Jyoti Nagar, Mr. Tomar (complete name with post not provided) and other unknown police officials engaged themselves in hate crimes against the complainant/victim and they cannot be protected under the garb of sanction as alleged offences committed by them cannot be said to have been committed while acting or purporting to act in the discharge if their official duty,” the Court added, as per Bar&Bench.

“Current SHO is directed to depute a responsible officer not below the rank of Inspector to conduct investigation in the present matter and role of other unknown police officials involved in the commission of alleged offences,” added the court.

The court categorically rejected the police’s argument that the accused officers were merely performing their official duties, stating that hate crimes committed by those in uniform cannot be excused under the guise of law enforcement.

“FIR be registered under sections 295-A/323/342/506 IPC against the SHO PS Jyoti Nagar (Mr. Tomar) who was holding the said post in February-March 2020,” the order stated.

This judgment reaffirms the necessity of accountability for custodial violence, particularly in cases where state institutions themselves become perpetrators of communal violence.

The larger picture: A systemic failure

Taken together, these three orders expose a systemic failure in policing during the 2020 Delhi riots. The courts have repeatedly highlighted:

• Selective investigation: While cases against political figures like Kapil Mishra were ignored, others were prosecuted with flimsy or fabricated evidence.
• Complicity in violence: Police personnel not only failed to control the riots but, in some instances, actively participated in violence and custodial torture.
• Bias in legal proceedings: Individuals from marginalised communities were falsely implicated, while officers and politicians aligned with the ruling party enjoyed impunity.

The Delhi Police’s actions—or lack thereof—during and after the riots raise serious concerns about institutional bias and political interference in law enforcement. These court observations serve as a crucial indictment of a law enforcement agency that has repeatedly been accused of favouring one side in communal conflicts. While the judicial interventions are significant, they also expose the limitations of legal remedies in the absence of genuine political will for police accountability and reform.

Related:

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Did Nand Kishore Gurjar admit to role in North East Delhi riots?

Hate speeches amplified by television, incited targeted violence against Muslims: CCR Report, Feb ‘20 Delhi riots

The post Delhi Police on Trial: Three court orders reveal collusion, cover-ups, and custodial torture by police officers during 2020 Delhi riots appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Khalid, an activist and former student of Jawaharlal Nehru University, is accused of being one of the “masterminds” of the conspiracy to instigate violence during the 2020 riots in the aftermath of the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protests. He was arrested on September 13, 2020, under the controversial anti-terrorist law Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, 1967 (UAPA). The solidarity event with Khalid screened ‘Prisoner No. 626710 is Present’, a documentary by noted filmmaker Lalit Vachani chronicling Khalid’s political journey, the mainstream media’s vilification of the activist since 2016, and the experiences of his close peers as he remains behind the bar. Other screenings of the film were held on the same day at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, and Ashoka University. Solidarity was also extended from beyond India’s borders as the Oxford South Asian Society at the University of Oxford also held the film’s screening. Between September 13 and 15, dozens of screenings of the film are being held at different solidarity events across India, including in Kolkata, Mumbai, Karnataka, and Kerala.

“The film screenings across the country were held to mark four years since Umar’s arrest, and the injustice he and other anti-CAA activists are facing as they are not even afforded a hearing in courts even while rapists and murderers are allowed bail and parole by the judiciary,” said Apeksha Priyadarshini, a JNU alumna, political activist, and friend of Khalid’s.

On September 13, people took to social media platforms asking for Khalid’s release and a fair trial. Actor Swara Bhasker posted on X saying, “Today marks 4 years of the incarceration of #UmarKhalid without bail, trial or crime. This is a travesty in a country supposed to be a democracy. This is a shame and an embarrassing testimony of our justice system.”

In Vachani’s documentary, writer and art curator Shuddhabrata Sengupta and Khalid’s partner and researcher Banojyotsna Lahiri say that the activist addressed many anti-CAA protest meets before the riots took place and always spoke of upholding the Constitution and peaceful protests. However, the Indian authorities blamed the largely public and peaceful anti-CAA protests for causing the riots, while blatantly ignoring inflammatory speeches given by Bharatiya Janata Party leaders and right-wing personalities in the same period.

With clips of TV news, Khalid’s speeches, and his interviews, the film also delves into how a large section of the news media is targetedly portrayed Khalid as a “terrorist” since the 2016 JNU protests, with one news channel going on to make an unsubstabtiated claim about Khalid’s association with terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammad.

Shuddhabrata Sengupta, who was interviewed for the documentary, spoke at the discussion after the screening. He pointed out how among the three student activists arrested in 2016 under sedition charges, Khalid was especially persecuted for his Muslim identity. Not surprisingly a murder attempt was made on Khalid in 2018 outside the Constitution Club. However, a Delhi court discharged the two men who allegedly attacked Khalid. The film traces how the continued vilification of the young Muslim activist in media culminated in him being charged with the UAPA in the Delhi riots case.

Priyadarshini, one of the organisers of the event held in Delhi, told NewsClick, “⁠The film is an important documentation, not just of Umar’s journey but also of our times. It delves into the details of the events as they transpired in 2020, and unravels the real conspiracy behind the Delhi violence, and why these activists have been blamed for it. It is also deeply personal because it highlights why the continuing incarceration of an activist and human being like Umar Khalid is such a tragic loss for this country.”

“The way mainstream media portrays him is nothing new anymore. But what feels outrageous is that those who actually incited the violence continue to roam free without any consequences. Real justice will not just be the freedom of Umar, Sharjeel [Imam], Gulfisha [Fatima], Khalid [Saifi] and others, but also that the real perpetrators of the Delhi violence are punished for their crimes,” she added.

Prisoner of Conscience and Absence

Underlining the solitary experience of an intellectual and activist in prison, and her own experience as Khalid’s long-time friend, Priyadarshini said, “⁠It is not just this separation which is painful. It is also knowing you cannot offer him any respite from this isolation that makes you feel helpless sometimes.”

Khalid’s another old friend from his JNU days, Anirban Bhattacharya, who moderated the discussion after the film screening at Jawahar Bhawan, said, “One of the biggest parts of the punishment is Umar not being able to have meaningful conversations with likeminded people,” adding that Khalid loves to talk. He mentioned that Khalid keeps himself company with books sent to him in Tihar Jail by his friends and other people and newspapers to keep in touch with the world.

When asked how the imprisoned activist is dealing with loneliness for so long, Banojyotsna Lahiri, who visits him in prison often, said, “He is coping because there is no other option. We have been pushed into this situation, but it’s part of the fight. The fight against CAA continues. He is surviving; that is how he is coping.”

Speaking about hopes of him being released on bail, Lahiri said, “If there is no date, what’s the point speculating?” She added, “It’s a robbery of basic liberty.”

“All the youth were on the streets to remind people that political prisoners have been suffering since 1929. So far, the trial has not started, and there is no discussion on whether they are guilty. Only bail applications have been heard, and the next hearing is on October 9th,” Lahiri said at the event.

Speaking on whether Sengupta feels hopeless about the repeated denial of Khalid’s bail applications, he said, “It is my responsibility to keep hope alive, whether bail happens or not. At every hearing, we hope it comes through. If we leave hope, it will crush the hopes of those inside the prison.”

In February 2020, communal violence erupted in northeast Delhi amid protests against CAA. Over four years later, the case against activists accused of planning these riots remains untried. The Delhi police filed charges against 18 individuals, 16 of whom are Muslim. Twelve of the accused have been jailed without trial for over four years.

Khalid’s peers point out that those unable to get bail in the case are also Muslims. Khalid, accused of delivering an inflammatory speech in Amravati before the riots, has had multiple bail applications rejected, only receiving a week’s interim bail in December 2022 for his sister’s wedding.

In June 2021, the Delhi High Court granted bail to three co-accused student activists, criticizing the state for blurring the line between protest and terrorism. Since then, judges have dismissed at least 60 Delhi riots cases, according to a recent Article 14 report.

Aritry Das is a freelance journalist.

Courtesy: Newsclick

The post Jailed Without Trial: Umar Khalid’s 4-Year Ordeal Ignites Solidarity appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The Delhi High Court has now issued notice on the petitions by the student activist and asked the investigating agency to file its response, but refused to grant a stay on the trial court proceedings in the meantime, reports PTI.

Kalita made the plea that she needed the videos and chats to prove her innocence, but the Delhi Police counsel contended that her petitions were not maintainable. He said further investigation was still underway in the cases and material being sought by the petitioner was not part of the charge sheet. Interestingly “investigations” have been on since the crackdown on close to two dozen such student activists between April and June 2020. PTI reports that, Justice Amit Bansal listed the case for further hearing on January 17 and said, “There is no question of stay till I hear both sides”.

Meanwhile, Kalita’s counsel submitted that the Delhi Police had commissioned certain persons to record the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act and National Register of Citizens in February 2020 and the footage should be supplied to her before the trial court proceeds to hear the arguments on the framing of charges. “Those videos will demonstrate that from February 22 to 26 (of 2020), we were protesting peacefully. The videos will demonstrate that.. I want to exercise my valuable right of discharge (in the criminal cases),” he said.

“The case against me (in one of the FIRs in the present matter) is a serious one, of murder. I am said to be part of a group of protestors under the Jafrabad flyover. Selective screen grabs have been taken… The videos exist. I say it is exculpatory. Provide me the videos,” Kalita’s lawyer argued. Besides the video footage, the lawyer also sought the “entire WhatsApp chat” of a group, “selective extracts” of which were allegedly being used against the petitioner.

Student activists Devangana Kalita, Natasha Narwal, Jamia Coordination Committee members Safoora Zargar, former AAP councillor Tahir Hussain and several others have also been booked under various FIRs in relation to the riots in the North-East Delhi, which left 53 people dead and over 700 injured in February 2020. Kalita, Sharjeel Imam, Khalid Saifi, Umar Khalid and others have been accused of being the “masterminds” behind the violence that took place at a time when the then US president Donald Trump and other dignitaries were in the national capital.

In a historic verdict under the dreaded UAPA (Unlawful Practices Prevention Act), the Delhi High Court had granted bail to three of them –Asif Tanha, Natasha Narwal and Devangana Kalita, in June 2021.

Related:

A new hope: Student activists charged under UAPA get bail

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A Sessions Court in North-East Delhi acquitted four accused in one of the several cases registered at the time of the 2020 violence of North-east Delhi. Additional Sessions Judge Pulastya Pramachala found that evidence against the accused was not proved beyond doubts and the court was able to rely on only one witness brought forth by the prosecution who could not prove any overt action committed by the accused.

It was alleged that the accused caused damage to personal property by setting fire to the vehicle of the complainant as well as vandalizing his shop.

The chargesheet was filed under sections 147 [rioting], 148 [Rioting, armed with deadly weapon], 188 [Disobedience to order duly promulgated by public servant], 380 [Theft in dwelling house], 427 [Mischief] and 436 [Mischief by fire or explosive substance] of the Indian Penal Code.

The accused Mohd. Shahnawaz @ Shanu, Mohd. Shoaib @ Chhutwa, Shahrukh and Rashid @ Raja, denied all the allegations and pleaded innocence, taking plea that they were not present at the spot and they have been falsely implicated in this case. While appreciating the evidence in the case and after analysing the examination of witnesses, the court found that only one witness could prove the identity of the accused as members of the mob and his testimony simply stated that he had seen the accused persons in the mob, which was pelting stones and indulging into arson.

The other witness said  he was unable to identify four rioters correctly because of memory loss

The court relied upon the judgment in Masalti & Ors. v. State of U.P. (1964) 8 SCR 133 whereby the court dealt with a case of multiple murder by an unlawful assembly. The court held that,

16… where a criminal court has to deal with evidence pertaining to the commission of an offence involving a large number of offenders and a large number of victims, it is usual to adopt the test that the conviction could be sustained only if it is supported by two or three or more witnesses who give a consistent account of the incident. In a sense, the test may be described as mechanical; but it is difficult to see how it can be treated as irrational or unreasonable.

Further, in State of Maharashtra v. Ramlal Devappa Rathod, (2015) 15 SCC 77 the Supreme Court held that the test adopted in the Masalti case “is required to be applied while dealing with cases of those accused who are sought to be made vicariously responsible for the acts committed by others, only by virtue of their alleged presence as members of the unlawful assembly without any specific allegations of overt acts committed by them, or where, given the nature of assault by the mob, the Court comes to the conclusion that it would have been impossible for any particular witness to have witnessed the relevant facets constituting the offence.”

The witness only stated that he knew some members of the mob and did not state about any overt act of the accused persons. There was also discrepancy in the accounts of two separate witnessed brought forth by the prosecution, while stating the time of occurrence of the incident. “Keeping in view such varying account of same facts, I find it desirable to apply the test of consistent testimony of more than one witness, in present case also,” the court said in its order. “Applying that test, I hold that sole testimony of PW9 cannot be sufficient to assume presence of accused persons herein in the mob, which set ablaze shop A-53 and the goods carrier, both belonging to PW1. In such situation, accused persons are given benefit of doubt,” the court concluded.

In view of this opinion and findings, the court held that the charges levelled against e four accused were not proved beyond doubts. Thus, the court acquitted them of all charges.

The order may be read here:

Related:

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Delhi violence: Will not take such mishaps leniently: says Court as Delhi police brings “irrelevant witness”

The post Delhi violence 2020: Court acquits 4 accused of arson, rioting and theft appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Claiming that there has been “no comprehensive analysis of media reporting and commentary” on the “developments” following the passage of the Citizens Amendment Act (CAA), and the February 2020 communal violence” in Delhi, a recent report, in an analysis of debates aired on the six most watched news channels from December 2019 to February 2020, has said there was “a similarity in rhetoric, positioning and language” to air “prejudice and suspicion against the Muslim community.”

There was a concerted attempt on the part of these channels — Republic TV and Times Now which are English channels, and Aaj Tak, Zee News, India TV, and Republic Bharat — to frame the issues around the CAA as Hindus versus Muslims with Muslims being portrayed as “troublemakers” or “ungrateful citizens”, or people whose actions were “antithetical to national interest”, the report, titled “Troubling Dualities: News Media as Arbiter of Fact or Platform of Hate?”, alleges.

Forming part of a larger study, “Uncertain Justice: A Citizens Committee Report on the North East Delhi Violence 2020”, the report, based on viewing 326 episodes on these channels running for 243 hours — accessed through their websites or social media accounts – accuses them of using “sensationalist tickers, hashtags and headlines flashed across TV screens” during their primetime shows.

Published by the advocacy group Constitutional Conduct Group (CCG), which consists of former civil servants, the authors of the study are: Justice Madan B Lokur, former Judge of the Supreme Court; Justice AP Shah, former Chief Justice of the Madras and Delhi High Courts; Justice R.S. Sodhi, former Judge of the Delhi High Court; Justice Anjana Prakash, former Judge of the Patna High Court; and GK Pillai, IAS (Retd.), former Home Secretary, Government of India.
Pointing towards how these channels sought to project the December 2019 nationwide protests against CAA as “singularly disruptive and violent”, the report says, they “uniformly” and “repeatedly” called anti-CAA protesters “vandals”, “rioters”, “potential terrorists”, “anti-national”, “tukde-tukde gang”, “victimizers”, “cowards”, “blackmailers” and “dangerous”.

Thus, according to the report, an episode of Republic TV’s primetime show, aired on December 16, 2019, was punctuated with flashing text, such as “Using rights excuse for riots?”, and ran the hashtag, #RightsNotRiots. “In the episode, the anchor repeatedly called protesters potential terrorists trying to incite communal violence”, the report notes.

And when on December 17, violent clashes broke out between the police and protesters in Delhi’s Seelampur-Jaffrabad area in the daytime, the report says, India TV’s primetime show posed a series of rhetorical questions: “Who set Delhi on fire?, Who burnt down Delhi?”

The show, the report says, displayed such flashing texts: 210 minutes of riots in Jaffrabad, 100% complete picture; who has spread Modi phobia in Delhi’s Muslims?; and direct guerilla war against PM Modi). On December 18, DNA (Zee News) claimed that the protests against the CAA are a larger conspiracy to spread communal riots with the help of social media tools, which were referred to as “Digital Danga”, even as the anchor termed the protesters as “Urban Naxals”.

And, the Republic Bharat on December 27, 2019, basing on “uncorroborated visuals and WhatsApp messages”, said there were calls to start jihad after meeting at India Gate with hockey sticks and baseball bats, attack the police and be prepared for becoming martyrs. However, there was “no description of the origins or authenticity of the WhatsApp message”, the report comments.

In January-February 2020, the Shaheen Bagh protests were sought to be “vilified by these channels”, the report says, stating, on January 27, 2020, an episode of DNA (Zee News) wondered, “Are we going to now need visa for entering Shaheen Bagh?”, with the accompanying hashtag #370InShaheenBagh. It says, “In the show, the anchor compared Shaheen Bagh to conflict sites like Kashmir and Syria in an attempt to characterize the protest site as violent and aggressive.”

On the next day (January 28, 2020), the telecast ran with the text “Shaheen Bagh should now get emptied”, and the hashtag was #LekarRahengeShaheenBagh (We will take over Shaheen Bagh). The anchor asked the audience: “Can’t all of us together free Shaheen Bagh from the tukde-tukde gang?”, stating the protesters were speaking the same language as in Pakistan or Kashmir.

Underling that news channels uncritically accepted “inciting comments made by panelists invited for discussions”, the report gives the example of how, on January 28, 2020, in an episode of Aaj Tak, the anchor praised provocative statements made by a BJP representative who quoted an unsubstantiated Imam order “to break the country” and “connect fire he with jihad”.

Then, on February 24, 2020, on a Republic TV host accused anti-CAA protesters of killing head constable, Ratan Lal, who died amidst mob violence. The report comments, “The exact circumstances of his killing remain under investigation to date, and certainly were not known on February 24.” Yet it featured flashing text such as, “Rioters kill police constable” followed by, “They have blood on their hands”.

Thus, DNA (Zee News) on December 26 said, “DNA test of expert stone pelters from Kashmir have reached UP”, claiming, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI), the Popular Front of India (PFI) and “expert stone pelting groups from Kashmir” were funding and training anti-CAA protesters for violence.

Then, the report says, India TV on January 3, 2020 portrayed Muslims, including a prominent politician, as colluding with the protesters for violence at local levels through the cover of mosques and the protests. The episode flashed the text, “Remove CAA and say La Ilaha Illlahah. Listen to each slogan and listen to the meaning of the protesters.” The show’s anchor posed the question, “How do Modi’s enemies give tuitions to Muslims?”, asking audience to pay close attention to the slogans which tell the protesters that “their religion is under threat.”

The episode, says the report, continued, “In the name of saving one’s religion, Muslim youth are being provoked and influenced into accepting the path of jihad.” It predicted, “A rally against the CAA would definitely be taken out after jummah prayer.” The report comments, “By casting protest as akin to notions of religious warfare, the show’s anchor seemed intent on creating a fear psychosis in the minds of non-Muslims.”

The anchor “repeatedly insinuated that the killing of Ratan Lal and acts of violence were deliberately being done to coincide with the official visit of then American President Donald Trump, which took place on February 25”,the report says. On the same day, Zee News said that “a conspiracy was in play with the prime intent of maligning India before the international world during President Trump’s visit”, claiming the “tukde-tukde gang and opposition parties were behind this.”

There was a similarity in rhetoric, positioning and language to air prejudice and suspicion against the Muslim community

Then, says the report, on February 25, 2020, Republic Bharat pushed the narrative that the protesters were in fact rioters by stating, “These people who are talking about CAA, they are rioters, they don’t know anything about the CAA, NRC.” And, the Republic TV made the remark, “The Nanis and Dadis (grandmothers) of Shaheen Bagh are basically jihadi elements sitting and inciting a violent mob here.”

The report notes, “An important strand of the vilifying narrative used by these channels was to show anti-CAA protests being imbued with designs of Muslim extremism, backed by Islamic extremist groups. The language of attacking Hindus, of waging jihad, was used to embed the Hindu-Muslim binary with Muslims as aggressors.”

Then, says the report, on January 16, 2020, Republic TV, focusing on the central question, “Is Shaheen Bagh a paid protest?” with the hashtag #ProtestOnHire, said, “This is the attempt of Islamic radicalization that is going on in Shaheen Bagh. Shaheen Bagh is not a people’s protest. It is political plus it is an attempt at Islamic radicalization. It is an attempt at religious polarization.”

The TV continued, “If you want to protest, go to Jantar Mantar. Why do you have to be in a Muslim majority area in Delhi? This has to stop at some point of time. The whole country is fed up with this Shaheen Bagh rubbish. This McDonaldization of the protest movement… Start a Shaheen Bagh franchise. You have some free time, start a Shaheen Bagh in Pune, start a Shaheen Bagh in Kolkata, start a Shaheen Bagh in Bengaluru. But it’s now going strongly against national interest.”

On January 17, 2020, the report says, the debate aired with the title, “Shaheen Bagh campaign: Call off ‘political protests’”, with a hashtag #ShaheenBaghSham, with the anchor stating, “This group wants bloodshed. Thousands of Rohingya refugees are living in camps in and around Kalindi Kunj and Shaheen Bagh…You’re bringing infiltrators into the protest, foreigners, threats to internal security are being provoked out there. Small children are being told that their entire life’s purpose should be to assassinate Narendra Modi and Amit Shah.”

On January 27, 2020, the report continues, in an episode of Republic TV titled “12 tapes expose ‘Break India’ conspiracy”, which ran with the hashtag #UniteForIndia, the anchor opened the show with, “Ladies and gentlemen, first of all, thank you for your support for the unite for India campaign, our campaign against the Muslim supremacist Islamic radicals who are trying to create a Shaheen Bagh experiment everywhere in India. And we must call them out as Muslim supremacists because their philosophy is Muslims for Muslims.”

The report underlines, “These channels framed the protest movement as a homegrown conspiracy with violent motives, hatched either by the opposition, or by international actors. Within this, there was also an attempt to frame the protests as anti-Modi as a conspiracy aimed to discredit the Prime Minister and exaggerate the dangers posed by the CAA-NRC.”

Thus, on December 19, 2019, an episode on India TV was titled as, “Modi’s enemy, the riot brigade…There is politics beyond fear.” And on January 3, 2020, in an episode, Republic Bharat stated that Pakistanis and Bangladeshis were part of those inciting violence “without any evidence to back this claim.” And on January 4, 2020, the Times Now episode titled “Are the CAA Protests an anti-Modi Conspiracy to Mislead Muslims?” ran with the hashtag #CAAAntiModiConspiracy.

On January 15, 2020, an episode of Republic TV was aired with the title “Congress-Pakistan hold CAA meet in Lahore?” and the hashtag #LahoreConspiracy. Printed text on the screen read, “Lahore to Shaheen Bagh via ISI?”. During the show, the anchor stated: “Please understand the dangerous mind that is planning this… They want to create a Shaheen Bagh political business model supported by the Pakistanis.”

Pointing out that from about mid-January 2020, the TV channels started giving calls for the closure of the Shaheen Bagh protest, the report says, “Following a protest by residents of Sarita Vihar in Delhi demanding the removal of police barricades in their neighborhood (ostensibly placed because of the neighbouring sit-in protests), an episode of Republic TV of January 21, 2020 whipped up a Hindu-Muslim narrative between Sarita Vihar and Shaheen Bagh, casting Shaheen Bagh as anti-Hindu.”

Thus, says the report, the anchor made the remarks: “Not far from Shaheen Bagh in Delhi is a colony called Sarita Vihar. Sarita Vihar is large residential colony whose hardworking tax-paying citizens have had their lives turned upside down for over a month. The children in Sarita Vihar have been terrorized and traumatized by the violent protests unending at Shaheen Bagh. All the roads are blocked all the time by the politicians and violent protesters at Shaheen Bagh.”

The anchor continued, “Anti-nationals and members of the tukde-tukde gang mock these people of Sarita Vihar, they laugh at them, and one of them said today on Twitter that till 370 is not brought back in Kashmir, the people of Sarita Vihar and other parts of Delhi must be prepared to pay and must be prepared to suffer. Shaheen Bagh, which is a useful epicenter of an anti-Hindu, anti-India, money guzzling, opportunistic and entirely political movement.”
On February 17, 2020, the report quotes Republic Bharat anchor making the remark, “The people of this country are against Shaheen Bagh…You’ll have to stop the protests or else you’ll be uprooted…Until there are riots, these people won’t shut up, we will not let riots take place.”he added, “Hindus are being provoked on account of Shaheen Bagh.” A panelist on the show was allowed to make the provocative remark, “Only Muslims cause riots in the country” and “Rioters should be shot.”

Courtesy: https://www.counterview.net

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