MUMBAI: Dr Syed Qasim Rasool Ilyas struggled to hold back tears while speaking about his son, incarcerated activist Umar Khalid, and mounting a searing attack on the criminal justice system. Khalid and co-accused Sharjeel Imam are standing trial in the 2020 Delhi riots case, having been charged under the controversial Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA). They have been in custody for over five years.
Addressing the audience at the 9th Shahid Azmi memorial lecture at the Marathi Patrakar Sangh, Ilyas questioned the denial of bail to his son and called for statutory consequences against investigating officers who filed what he described as “frivolous” and “senseless” prosecutions.
Noting that “we had taken the case to the Supreme Court several times when he was the CJI and six times the case was assigned to the bench of retired judge Bela Trivedi”, who he said was “notoriously” known for not granting bail, Ilyas referred to public remarks made after retirement by former Chief Justice of India, DY Chandrachud. He said, “He now says that Umar should have gotten bail, reiterating that ‘jail is an exception and bail is the rule’. But in Khalid’s and Imam’s case, I suppose ‘bail is the exception and jail is the rule’.”
The lecture, organised by Innocence Network India, was themed around the denial of bail to Khalid and Imam but it unfolded as a broader indictment of prolonged incarceration under stringent laws. Ilyas said Khalid had turned down two scholarships from foreign universities because he “wanted to dedicate his life for the nation” and “did not even apply for a passport”.
In an emotionally charged segment of his speech, Ilyas referred to BJP leader Kapil Mishra, whose alleged speech in north-east Delhi preceded the public outbreak of violence in February 2020, and said that “today he is a minister”. Drawing a contrast with his son’s continued incarceration, Ilyas noted that the majority of those killed in the riots were Muslims. He asked, “If most of the victims were Muslims, did Muslims kill only Muslims?” The comparison, he suggested, reflected what he described as “a troubling disparity”.
Ilyas demanded legislative reform to impose accountability on investigating officers in cases that collapse after years of trial. “If an accused is acquitted after 10 years or more, the officer who filed thousands of pages of baseless chargesheets and listed hundreds of witnesses must face the same stringent provisions,” he said.
Citing Khalid’s case, he said the agency had filed a chargesheet running into nearly 30,000 pages and named more than 900 witnesses. “Does this even make sense?” he asked, adding that, at such a pace, “the case will not conclude in Umar’s lifetime”.
The theme of systemic delay and pre-trial punishment ran through the evening. Asif Mujtaba, introduced as a friend of Imam and a co-organiser of the protests against CAA-NRC in Shaheen Bagh, in Delhi, framed the prolonged denial of bail as emblematic of a deeper constitutional crisis. “Imam, as of today, has been in jail for exactly 2,205 days,” he said.
Mujtaba also turned the focus squarely to the narrative around the 2020 Delhi riots and the manner in which conspiracy allegations have been framed. He argued that speeches delivered during the anti-CAA protests were being retrospectively stitched together to construct a sweeping theory of orchestration, while, in his view, the wider context of the protests and the sequence of violence were being obscured.
Referring to Imam’s speeches, he said they had been selectively quoted and “stripped of context” to portray them as seditious or conspiratorial, even though they were delivered in the course of a mass political movement.
“The government could not digest that the Shaheen Bagh protests would turn into a mass movement and hence it turned its focus on defaming the protests. The protests which began in December 2019 were being defamed in January by BJP leaders. Even Amit Shah sought votes at an election rally, asking people to ‘vote with such a force that currents are felt in Shaheen Bagh’,” Mujtaba said.
The event drew lawyers, activists, and those acquitted or are out on bail in several UAPA and related cases, including Bhima Koregaon case accused Sudha Bharadwaj, Vernon Gonsalves, Arun Ferreira and Hany Babu.