Ranjan Solomon
UMAR KHALID’S continued incarceration is no longer a legal anomaly. It is a political statement. Years after his arrest under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), without conviction and with trial scarcely underway, his case has come to embody the transformation of India’s criminal justice system from an instrument of adjudication into a mechanism of intimidation.
The question is not whether the state has the power to arrest Umar Khalid. It does. The more unsettling question is why the state has chosen to apply its harshest laws to him—and to others like him—while shielding those whose actions and words are far more closely aligned with actual violence. The answer lies in selective application, not legal necessity.
From Law to Strategy: How UAPA Became a Political Weapon
The UAPA was originally justified as an extraordinary law to combat extraordinary threats—armed insurgency, terror networks, secessionist violence. Over time, however, it has mutated into something far more dangerous: a law that allows the state to imprison without proving guilt, often for years.
Section 43D(5) of the Act reverses the basic logic of criminal jurisprudence. Bail is to be denied if the court believes the accusations are “prima facie true.” Crucially, courts are discouraged from closely examining evidence at this stage. The result is predictable: the police narrative, presented through voluminous chargesheets, becomes self-validating.
In Umar Khalid’s case, this architecture has worked exactly as intended. The state does not need to prove that he organised violence, handled weapons, funded riots, or issued operational instructions. It merely needs to suggest ideological proximity, interpret speech as intent, and infer conspiracy from association. This is not counter-terrorism. It is preventive incarceration by another name.
Speech as Crime, Silence as Complicity
The evidentiary core of the case against Khalid is not action, but expression. Speeches, WhatsApp messages, academic affiliations, protest participation—these are elevated into markers of terror.
This is especially dangerous in a constitutional democracy. Political speech, by its nature, is oppositional. It questions power, mobilises dissent, and often unsettles the state. To criminalise speech is to criminalise democracy itself.
Courts have acknowledged this danger- selectively
When granting bail to Devangana Kalita and Natasha Narwal, the Delhi High Court issued a rare and striking warning. It observed that the state had blurred the line between legitimate protest and terrorist activity, cautioning that such reasoning would have a “chilling effect” on democratic rights. The allegations against them—coordination, mobilisation, protest speeches – were deemed insufficient to justify prolonged incarceration under UAPA.
Yet the same reasoning stops abruptly at Umar Khalid’s prison cell. If protest coordination is not terrorism, how does Khalid’s alleged role suddenly become so? If speech alone cannot sustain terror charges, why is his speech treated differently? The law provides no answer. Politics does.
The Asymmetry of Accountability
Selective application is not merely about who is punished—it is about who is protected.
In the lead-up to the Delhi violence of February 2020, public speeches calling for force, retaliation, and “teaching a lesson” were made by ruling-party leaders. These speeches were not delivered in the abstract. They were delivered at charged moments, in charged spaces, to charged audiences.
Video evidence exists. Complaints were filed. Names were provided. Yet:
· No UAPA charges
· No custodial interrogation
· No prolonged incarceration· No UAPA charges
Kapil Mishra’s ultimatum to the police – issued hours before violence erupted—has been judicially acknowledged, yet remains legally inconsequential. The contrast could not be starker. This is not a failure of evidence. It is a failure of will.
The pattern is consistent: Muslims, students, activists, and critics are arrested swiftly; majoritarian actors enjoy procedural inertia. In effect, the law punishes vulnerability and shields proximity to power.
The Making of an Exemplary Prisoner
Umar Khalid’s incarceration must also be understood symbolically. He is not just another accused. He represents a convergence of identities the present regime finds threatening: Muslim, left-leaning, intellectually articulate, and politically defiant.
Authoritarian systems often rely on exemplary punishment—the deliberate targeting of a visible figure to discipline a broader population. Khalid’s prolonged detention sends a message far beyond his own life: dissent will cost you years, even if it does not cost you a conviction.
Universities absorb this message. Activist networks internalise it. Journalists note it. The chilling effect is not incidental; it is strategic.
Process as Punishment: The Slow Violence of Delay
One of the most corrosive aspects of Khalid’s case is the glacial pace of proceedings. Chargesheets running into tens of thousands of pages overwhelm the defence. Hearings are staggered. Bail arguments take months. Trials are postponed indefinitely. This is not bureaucratic inefficiency—it is structural violence.
The Indian legal system, especially under special laws, allows the state to win without ever securing a conviction. Time itself becomes the weapon. Years spent in prison cannot be returned. Careers dissolve. Families fracture. Public memory fades. Even acquittal, if it comes, arrives too late to restore what has been taken. This is why UAPA cases have a disturbingly low conviction rate but an extraordinarily high rate of prolonged detention. The punishment lies not in the verdict, but in the wait.
A Familiar Pattern: Echoes of the Emergency India has seen this before
During the Emergency (1975–77), laws were bent to incarcerate political opponents, activists, and journalists. Preventive detention was normalised. Courts often deferred to the state. Dissent was reframed as disruption.
What distinguishes the present moment is not the absence of democracy’s formal structures, but their hollowing out. Elections continue. Courts function. Laws are followed, but selectively. The result is a democracy that looks intact while behaving coercively.
Umar Khalid’s case exemplifies this transformation. There is no suspension of rights on paper. There is merely a redefinition of threat, where disagreement itself becomes suspect.
The Communal Undercurrent
It would be dishonest to ignore the communal dimension. The overwhelming majority of those arrested in the Delhi riots conspiracy case are Muslim. Many are also victims of the violence they are accused of orchestrating.
This inversion—where victims become accused and perpetrators become witnesses—reveals how law enforcement has absorbed majoritarian assumptions. Muslim political mobilisation is treated as inherently suspect, while Hindu mobilisation is read as cultural or emotional.
Khalid’s Muslim identity is not incidental to his prosecution. It shapes how his speech is heard, how his intent is inferred, and how his politics is interpreted.
Judicial Discomfort Without Judicial Relief
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Ranjan Solomon is a writer, researcher and activist based in Goa. He has worked in social movements since he was 19 years of age. The views expressed here are the author’s own and Clarion India does not necessarily share or subscribe to them. He can be contacted at ranjan.solomon@gmail.com
