On September 13, 2020, Umar Khalid, a young human rights activist, was targeted in the national capital. He has now completed six years in prison without trial. These six years mark a period in which the government used the legal system to imprison an individual for holding political dissent.
The image from February 2, 2020, still lingers in public memory: Umar Khalid addressing a crowd at Shaheen Bagh, Delhi. That crowd had gathered against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) and the proposed National Register of Citizens (NRC). What began as a protest in December 2019 soon turned into a symbol of resistance, as Muslim women stepped forward to lead the opposition to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) discriminatory policies.
What Khalid said that day still carries weight. He spoke of how, when Donald Trump arrived in India on February 24, the country would send a message that the Prime Minister and his government were trying to divide the nation and trample Gandhi’s values, while the people of India stood firm against them. If those in power wanted to break the country apart, he said, the people were ready to hold it together instead.
What followed was even more striking: a pledge that violence would never be met with violence, nor hatred with hatred, but with love. Even if beaten with lathis, the tricolour would stay in hand; even if bullets were fired, the Constitution would be held aloft; and if jailed, they would walk in singing “Saare Jahan Se Achha Hindustan Hamara,” Muhammad Iqbal’s 1904 composition that once echoed as an anthem of defiance against British rule and still resounds at Republic Day and Independence Day ceremonies.
That very speech became the basis for his imprisonment. Under the first information report (FIR) registered on March 6, Khalid was named an accused and arrested. He faces four sections of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), covering abetment, causing death, raising funds and conspiracy, alongside 18 sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) ranging from murder and rioting to trespass, two sections of the Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act, 1984, and two sections of the Arms Act, 1959.
On September 14, Additional Sessions Judge Amitabh Rawat of Karkardooma court sent him into 10 days of police custody, after the police told the court they needed to confront him with documents running to 11 lakh pages. He had already been questioned for five hours on July 31, when his phone was seized, and for roughly 12 hours on the day of his arrest. The chargesheet was expected to be filed on September 17.
Jailed for calling for unity
There is a bitter irony here. A regime that needs to jail someone like Khalid and construct an elaborate, almost farcical chargesheet against him is, at the same time, shielding and rewarding those responsible for the killings and provocations of February 2020. This is not a sign of strength; it is evidence of weakness, of sickness, of hollowness. It does not point to the regime’s durability but to its numbered days, because no tyranny can withstand the anger and idealism of the young forever.
Senior advocate Vrinda Grover recently observed that Khalid has spent six years behind bars in the Northeast Delhi riots case without trial, purely for the ideas he holds. What is undisputed, she said, is that he has been jailed for his thinking, for actively exercising his citizenship, rather than for being a passive citizen who merely casts a vote now and then, and in her view, this is exactly what his own chargesheet reveals.
His mother, Dr Sabiha Khanum, recalls the anxious week she spent with him when he came home on interim bail to attend his sister’s wedding. She has also spoken about a rare source of hope: his doctoral thesis has now been published as a book. Even though he remains behind bars, she says, his words and writing can travel far, reaching people he himself cannot. She believes this will help people understand and appreciate his work better.
A book written under duress
When the first copies of “Fractured Communities: Adivasi Histories and Power” arrived at their home, it should have been an afternoon of joy, her son signing a copy, smiling at their excitement. Instead, he remains in prison under the UAPA, nearly six years on, with his trial yet to even begin. The book grew out of research he conducted at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), and he had submitted the thesis in July 2018, by which point he had already faced sedition charges, spent time in prison, and been rusticated from the university.
It was written not in the calm of a library but in the shadow of arrest, a vicious media trial, threats to his safety, and endless court hearings.
His father, Dr SQR Ilyas, marked the day plainly on September 13: Khalid had completed six years in custody without trial, which he called a grave assault on democracy, personal liberty under Article 21, and the rule of law. Six years, he said, is too long and silence is no longer an option.
Several human rights organisations have called the investigation “bogus,” describing it as an attempt to silence dissent. Recently, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani wrote a letter to Khalid, shared on the very day Mamdani was sworn in as the city’s first Muslim and one of its youngest-ever mayors. In it, he wrote that he often thinks of Khalid’s words on not letting bitterness consume oneself, that meeting his parents had been a pleasure and closed with a simple line: “We are all thinking of you.”
The Supreme Court‘s refusal to grant bail to Khalid and Sharjeel Imam struck many as shocking and unjust. Neither has been accused of committing violence themselves, only of conspiracy, even as multiple videos of their speeches show them explicitly speaking against violence. Despite having already spent five years in jail without trial at the time, the court denied bail, relying on statements from “protected witnesses” whose identities were never disclosed.
To many, this made a mockery of the right to life and liberty.
Speaking of unity no longer viable
These are no longer times when speaking of unity, love and non-violence earned respect. Invoking the Constitution and its Preamble, or recalling traditions of peaceful coexistence and tolerance, can now land a person in jail under the UAPA on charges of abetting terrorism.
This is the deeper misfortune of a secular democratic republic: Muslim activists like Khalid and Sharjeel Imam have spent six years in jail for opposing the CAA, their trial still not begun, while someone like Swatantra Bhardwaj, accused of assault, rape threats, hate speech and violent attack, secured interim bail within about 10 days.
Being a Muslim in India is not easy. But the struggle of Umar Khalid and other imprisoned social activists will continue until they are released.
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