Opinion What SC’s bail denial to Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam tells us about India’s criminal justice system
Courts cannot cede their constitutional obligation to protect personal liberty, particularly when delayed trials hand the executive an undue advantage, and the political character of incarceration is evident
When liberty turns on allegations rather than adjudication, incarceration ceases to be exceptional and begins to resemble a default response
The Supreme Court’s decision to deny bail to Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam, even as bail has been granted to the other accused in the 2020 Delhi riots cases, raises serious questions about the judiciary’s current approach to liberty, delay, and constitutional responsibility. While the grant of bail to some accused is undoubtedly welcome, the continued incarceration of Khalid and Imam, now extending beyond five years without the conclusion of trial, exposes a deeper failure of India’s criminal justice system.
Central to the Court’s reasoning is its observation that “this stage of proceedings does not justify their enlargement on bail.” This raises a deeper concern. Even if proceedings have formally progressed, they remain nowhere near their conclusion after more than five years. Treating the absence of a concluding stage as a reason to deny bail risks converting prolonged detention into a holding pattern without constitutional endpoints, where the state seems to benefit from delay without bearing the burden of proving guilt within a reasonable time.
It further suggests that mere allegations of grave offences can keep individuals imprisoned indefinitely. When liberty turns on allegations rather than adjudication, incarceration ceases to be exceptional and begins to resemble a default response.
Equally concerning is the transformation of bail hearings themselves. Courts increasingly undertake detailed evidentiary assessments at the bail stage, relying on chargesheets and witness statements that have not been tested through cross-examination. This collapses the distinction between bail proceedings and trial, while denying the accused the procedural safeguards that a trial guarantees. When liberty is decided on untested material, the presumption of innocence is reduced to a procedural formality.
These cases must also be situated within the broader structural realities of India’s criminal justice system. According to Prison Statistics India 2022, over 75 per cent of India’s prison population consists of undertrials: More than 4.3 lakh individuals who have not been convicted of any offence. Many have spent years in prison awaiting trial, often for offences carrying sentences shorter than the period of their incarceration.
Seen against this backdrop, the Court’s emphasis on the “stage of proceedings” carries unsettling implications. It implies that the longer a trial is delayed, the weaker the claim to liberty becomes. Such reasoning shifts the cost of systemic failure from the State to the individual, precisely the shift constitutional courts are meant to resist. If delay strengthens the case for continued detention, the incentive to conduct timely trials is fundamentally undermined.
The political context of these prosecutions cannot be ignored. Allegations of conspiracy, speeches, and ideological association form the backbone of the cases against Khalid and Imam. When incarceration follows political activity and trial remains indefinitely deferred, the line between lawful prosecution and punitive detention becomes thin. In such circumstances, judicial vigilance is not optional; it is central to the judiciary’s role as a constitutional counter-majoritarian institution.
To be clear, bail does not amount to exoneration. Granting bail neither trivialises allegations nor forecloses the possibility of conviction after a fair trial. What it does is reaffirm a basic constitutional principle: The criminal process is not meant to punish before guilt is established. Denying bail after more than five years of incarceration without trial risks doing precisely that.
It is important to acknowledge the relief granted to other accused through the grant of bail. That decision recognises, at least in part, the constitutional costs of prolonged detention. But partial correction cannot substitute for principled consistency. Liberty cannot depend on selective relief within a shared factual matrix.
The denial of bail to Khalid and Imam should prompt serious institutional introspection. Courts cannot cede their constitutional obligation to protect personal liberty, particularly when delayed trials hand the executive an undue advantage and the political character of incarceration is evident.
The writer teaches at Jindal global law school, O P Jindal University
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