Incarcerated for six years and counting, activist and Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) PhD student Umar Khalid has won the 2026 Award for Human Rights Defenders at Risk.
The award was presented by Ireland-based human rights organisation Front Line Defenders. Khalid was not there to receive it. He has been languishing in Tihar Jail since September 13, 2020, without a trial.
The young activist was arrested under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) and the Arms Act in connection with the deadly 2020 Delhi riots, leaving 53 dead and hundreds injured and displaced. Most of those killed were Muslims.
The Delhi Police has maintained that Umar Khalid gave a call for violence and is part of a larger conspiracy to defame Prime Minister Narendra Modi and India’s sovereign integrity.
He, along with fellow JNU student Sharjeel Imam, has had bail pleas repeatedly refused by the Delhi High Court and the Supreme Court of India.
Front Line Defenders called Khalid’s continuous imprisonment an “evidence of a wider moment in India,” while adding the media’s role in shaping public perception about him.
“That pattern disproportionately affects human rights defenders, journalists and students who exercise their right to peaceful assembly and free expression,” added the organisation.
Other recipients included Ahmadreza Haeri, an anti-death penalty campaigner from Iran, Laurinda Manuel Gouveia, a feminist pro-participatory democracy defender from Angola, Adda Vyctoria Caetano, a Black trans woman leader from Brazil, and Ljiljana Nešić, a feminist peacebuilder from Serbia.
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