There are certain legal clichés that judges—and lawyers, journalists and citizens—like to repeat. Bail is the rule, jail the exception. Justice delayed is justice denied. And, with a weary shrug, the wheels of justice grind exceedingly slowly.
But what happens when those wheels appear to have stopped altogether?
On September 13, Umar Khalid completed six years in prison without a trial. Not six years after conviction. Not six years after the evidence was tested in court. Six years as an undertrial, with no trial date in sight and, remarkably, without even charges having been framed.
Khalid is no ordinary prisoner. A former student leader at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), he became internationally known first as a fiery political activist and later as one of the principal accused in the Delhi riots case. His incarceration has generated fierce domestic debate, extensive international coverage and increasingly vocal criticism from human-rights organisations.
Much has already been written about the case. It needs to be resurrected not because Khalid is above the law, but because the length of his incarceration raises a question that goes to the heart of what the law is supposed to protect: can pre-trial detention, however grave the allegations, continue indefinitely without itself becoming a form of punishment?
Khalid was arrested in September 2020 and charged under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, or UAPA, along with other provisions of law, in connection with the 2020 Delhi riots. The prosecution alleges that he was a key conspirator in a larger conspiracy. Khalid and his lawyers deny the allegations and maintain that his speeches and political activities have been selectively interpreted and taken out of context.
The legal battle has become a contest between two powerful principles: the State’s interest in prosecuting alleged threats to national security and the Constitution’s protection of individual liberty.
And there is an increasingly uncomfortable question at its centre: how long can the first principle eclipse the second?
A PRISONER’S CALENDAR
Khalid’s own description of prison time is perhaps more revealing than any legal brief. Writing on the occasion of his sixth year in custody, he described the strange elasticity of time behind bars. Days blur into one another. Court dates become landmarks. So do meetings with loved ones across glass and iron mesh, changing seasons, the colours of trees outside the prison ward and the small routines that make one day distinguishable from the next. “On 13 September, I will complete six years in prison,” he wrote. “When I try to think of this period as a measure of time, I find it difficult to comprehend.”
He recalled Dostoevsky’s prison memoirs and another political prisoner, exiled thousands of miles from India more than 150 years ago, who had described a remarkably similar state of mind.
There is something unsettling about a man having to measure his life not by birthdays, professional milestones or family occasions, but by the seasons visible through a prison wall.
His account is intensely physical. Five-minute telephone calls with loved ones. Anxiety. Breathlessness. Cold dinners. Books. Radio music. A concrete slab that serves as a bed in summer. A blanket that doubles as a mattress in winter.
At night, he reads until sleep takes over. Sometimes the heat wakes him with breathlessness.
He writes of the peculiar terror of breathlessness inside prison—the way an involuntary bodily function suddenly becomes visible and conscious, while the agony remains invisible to everyone except the person experiencing it.
Then comes the larger question. “How is it that I have spent most of my thirties in captivity?” he asks. “Does it move even a feather in our hallowed chambers of justice?”
It is difficult to read that sentence without considering the distance between constitutional principle and lived reality.
FROM STUDENT ACTIVIST TO TERROR ACCUSED
Khalid first became nationally prominent through student politics at JNU. In 2016, following a political event at the university, he was arrested on sedition charges. After his release, he emerged as a prominent voice in the anti-BJP and anti-government protest movement.
His politics were confrontational, but he repeatedly framed his opposition in terms of non-violence. “We won’t respond to violence with violence. We won’t respond to hate with hate,” he told a crowd in a speech that became widely known. “If they spread hate, we will respond to it with love.”
His subsequent prosecution centres substantially on a speech delivered in Amravati, Maharashtra, in 2020 during protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act. The Delhi Police treated portions of that speech as central to the conspiracy case arising from the Delhi riots. During earlier legal proceedings, the Delhi High Court sharply criticised certain remarks in the speech, describing them as “obnoxious” and “offensive”. Khalid’s defence, however, has maintained that his words were selectively edited and stripped of context, and that his message was one of non-violent resistance.
The Supreme Court, in rejecting his bail pleas, took a substantially different view of the prosecution’s case. It held that Khalid and co-accused Sharjeel Imam occupied a central and formative role in the alleged conspiracy, distinguishing them from other accused who had subsequently secured bail.
The legal difficulty for Khalid lies partly in the architecture of the UAPA itself. Under Section 43D(5), bail becomes exceptionally difficult where the court finds reasonable grounds for believing that the accusations are prima facie true. In such cases, the conventional presumption in favour of liberty is heavily constrained.
The Supreme Court dismissed Khalid’s bail plea and later rejected his review petition in April 2026, finding no grounds to alter its earlier decision. And so the prisoner remained where he had been since September 2020. In prison. Without a trial.
THE NAJEEB PRECEDENT
This is where the legal argument becomes more complicated—and more important.
Khalid’s defence team, which has included senior advocate Kapil Sibal and other distinguished lawyers, has invoked the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Union of India vs KA Najeeb.
The Najeeb judgment established an important constitutional escape valve within the stringent framework of anti-terror legislation.
KA Najeeb, accused in a UAPA case, had spent years as an undertrial after being arrested in 2015. His earlier bail applications had been rejected. Eventually, the Kerala High Court granted him bail, taking into account the prolonged incarceration and the failure to ensure a speedy trial.
The Supreme Court upheld that approach. Its reasoning was significant: even statutory restrictions on bail under stringent anti-terror laws cannot completely extinguish the constitutional guarantee of life and personal liberty under Article 21. Where incarceration becomes extraordinarily prolonged and the trial itself is unlikely to conclude within a reasonable period, continued detention may violate the Constitution.
In other words, the State cannot use a stringent statute to create a constitutional black hole.
That principle is central to Khalid’s case. His lawyers argue that after six years without even the framing of charges, continued detention has crossed the constitutional line drawn by Article 21. The prosecution, meanwhile, continues to rely on the seriousness of the alleged conspiracy and the statutory restrictions imposed by the UAPA.
The contradiction is difficult to miss.
The Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed that liberty remains a constitutional value. Another Supreme Court bench has cautioned that prolonged incarceration under the UAPA cannot be allowed to overwhelm the fundamental right to liberty.
Yet, Khalid remains incarcerated.
THE WIDER UNEASE
The concern is no longer confined to his lawyers or political supporters.
An editorial in The Indian Express described the denial of bail as an alarming retreat from the principle that bail is the rule and jail the exception. The Hindu, Hindustan Times, The Tribune and other publications have expressed similar concerns, albeit from different editorial perspectives.
The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has gone further, holding that Khalid’s prolonged detention is arbitrary and violates international human-rights law.
Amnesty International and other international rights organisations have also criticised his continued incarceration.
Meanwhile, the case has become a symbol in the international debate over India’s treatment of dissent and national-security legislation. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani has sent Khalid a handwritten note expressing solidarity. Interviews and coverage have appeared in publications such as The Quint, while sections of the television media have portrayed him in dramatically different terms, including branding him a terrorist.
The battle over Khalid, therefore, is not merely about one man. It is also about what happens when the machinery of national security collides with the constitutional promise of personal liberty.
SIX YEARS AND COUNTING
On September 14, a planned screening at the National Law School of India University of Lalit Vachani’s documentary Prisoner No 626710 is Present had to be rescheduled amid opposition from the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad. The title is drawn from the number under which Khalid is listed in Tihar Jail: Prisoner No. 626710. The symbolism is almost too neat.
Outside prison, Khalid is a political figure, a controversial activist, a defendant, a cause célèbre, a villain to some and a political prisoner to others. Inside, he is a number.
And somewhere between those two identities lies the question the justice system has yet to answer. Not whether Umar Khalid is guilty or innocent. That is precisely what a trial is supposed to determine. Not whether his politics are admirable or objectionable. That is for citizens to decide. Not even whether the allegations against him are serious. They plainly are. The question is simpler. When does the waiting itself become a punishment?
Khalid’s prison diary ends on a line borrowed from a Coldplay song: “Nobody said it was easy—no one said it would be this hard.”
Six years is a very long time to discover just how hard.
—The writer is former Senior Managing Editor, India Legal magazine
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