Supreme Court grants bail to Nepali citizen booked under UAPA

This is the third major case where the Supreme Court has granted bail despite the UAPA bar against granting bail.

July 19, 2024 01:19 PM IST

3 min read

The bench of Justices J B Pardiwala and Ujjal Bhuyan noted that Iqbal has been incarcerated for over nine years with the evidence of only two witnesses being recorded in that time.

Noting the right to a speedy trial and that “the trial is proceeding at a snail’s pace,” the Supreme Court on Thursday granted bail to Sheikh Javed Iqbal, a Nepali citizen booked under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), bypassing its stringent bail provision.

The bench of Justices J B Pardiwala and Ujjal Bhuyan noted that Iqbal has been incarcerated for over nine years with the evidence of only two witnesses being recorded in that time.

Significantly, the apex court sidestepped the stringent bail provision under UAPA, which prescribes a finding of not guilty for the grant of bail, and said that “statutory restrictions would not come in the way” if the right to life and personal liberty (Article 21 of the Constitution of India) of the accused has been “infringed”.

This is the third major case where the SC has granted bail despite the UAPA bar against granting bail.

Section 43(D)(5) of UAPA places additional restrictions for granting bail, providing that the public prosecutor must be heard in any bail application and completely barring bail in cases if there are grounds to believe that the accusation is prima facie (on face value) true.

The ruling follows a 2021 precedent — Union of India v K A Najeeb where the Court first granted bail in a UAPA case for delay in conducting the trial. In Najeeb’s case, the accused had been in jail for over five years and 276 witnesses were left to be examined. Referring to the bail conditions in Section 43(D)(5), the court held that “the rigours of such provisions will melt down where there is no likelihood of trial being completed within a reasonable time and the period of incarceration already undergone has exceeded a substantial part of the prescribed sentence”.

Also read | Explained: What are the UAPA amendments? When is an individual designated a ‘terrorist’?

In April this year, the court relied on this ruling to grant bail to UAPA accused and former Nagpur University professor Shoma Sen in the Bhima Koregaon case. Referring to the decision in K A Najeeb, the court stated “long period of incarceration was held to be a valid ground to enlarge an accused on bail in spite of the bail-restricting provision of Section 43D (5) of the 1967 Act”. In Shoma Sen’s case, the court also held that “any form of deprival of liberty results in breach of Article 21 of the Constitution of India and must be justified on the ground of being reasonable, following a just and fair procedure and such deprival must be proportionate in the facts of a given case”.

Story continues below this ad

Iqbal, a citizen of Nepal, has been accused of possessing and knowingly using counterfeit currency under the Indian Penal Code, 1860, and of committing terrorist acts by causing “damage to the monetary stability of India” under UAPA. The Lucknow police allegedly recovered fake Indian currency to the tune of Rs 26,03,500 from Iqbal’s possession when they arrested him in February 2015 at India’s border with Nepal.