Thirty-five-year-old Umar Khalid completed five years in Delhi’s Tihar jail on Saturday, September 13, without a trial.
Khalid, who has a PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), was arrested on September 13, 2020, under the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) in connection with the 2020 Delhi riots that claimed over 40 Muslim lives, over 700 were injured, and several were left homeless.
He faces charges that include rioting, murder, sedition, terrorist acts and others under UAPA.
The Delhi police alleged that Khalid was one of the “masterminds” of the February riots. The violence erupted during the protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens in India (NRC).
Recently, the Delhi High Court rejected Khalid’s and several others, including Sharjeel Imam, Mohd Saleem Khan, Shifa Ur Rehman, Athar Khan, Meeran Haider, Abdul Khalid Saifi, Gulfisha Fatima and Shadab Ahmed, bail pleas, saying “conspiratorial” violence under the garb of demonstrations or protests by citizens couldn’t be allowed.
Khalid has moved to the Supreme Court since.
A 2020 article by The Wire explains Kahlid’s incarceration as a “symbol of resistance” for Muslims in a fast-emerging Hindutva land.
He represented a young, fearless, educated, socially aware Indian Muslim, something that the saffron party has unfailingly worked against.
“Picking on Khalid and others serves to represent anti-CAA protests as being purely led by Muslims, rather than acknowledge them as the broad, diverse India-wide phenomenon that they were, comprising of people from all faiths and in several regions. Once you portray a movement as mostly Muslim-led (and involving “radical” leftists), it becomes easier to repress it and prevents others from joining it,” the article read.
In his speech (available online) which the Delhi Police used against him, he says, “We will not answer violence with violence, anger with anger, if they spread hatred we will reply with love, if they use batons, we will fly the tricolor, if they fire bullets, we will hold aloft the Constitution, if they put us in jail, we will sing ‘Sare jahan se acha Hindustan hamara‘ and gladly head to prison – but we will not let you destroy this country.”
In February this year, a group of 150 prominent writers, filmmakers and activists, including senior journalist Ramachandra Guha, author Amitav Ghosh, film actor Naseeruddin Shah and former Member of Rajya Sabha Rajmohan Gandhi, united their voices to seek freedom for Umar Khalid alongside other CAA protest detainees.
In this joint statement, they strongly opposed the prolonged detention without trial or bail, forcing them to endure years in prison.
“This repeated denial of bail and prolonged incarceration without trial is one of the most distressing aspects of Umar Khalid’s case and that of the others in this case. This is even though the high court in 2021 while granting bail to three of the accused, had made strong observations about the arguments put forth by the state,” the statement said.
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