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UAPA bail rulings split co-accused after years in custody; Khalid and Imam’s fresh appeals remain pending
The 2025 Delhi High Court refusal was not the end of the bail story: in January 2026 the Supreme Court granted bail to five co-accused but kept Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam in custody after an accused-specific UAPA assessment. Their renewed appeals remain pending, highlighting the unresolved tension between prolonged pre-trial detention, Article 21 liberty and Section 43D(5)’s restrictive bail test; none of the bail rulings is a finding of guilt.
A September 2025 Instagram reel from Ravishnews criticised the continued detention of Umar Khalid, Sharjeel Imam and other accused after the Delhi High Court refused bail in the FIR 59/2020 northeast Delhi riots conspiracy case. The reel is evidence of that public criticism, not a judicial finding. The more durable issue is how prolonged pre-trial incarceration is weighed against the restrictive bail test in the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).
The 2025 High Court order was a bail ruling, not a finding of guilt
On 2 September 2025, the Delhi High Court rejected bail appeals by Khalid, Imam and seven other appellants. At the bail stage, the court held that the prosecution material against Khalid and Imam could not be treated as weak and that the statutory bar in Section 43D(5) of the UAPA applied. It expressly said its observations were confined to bail and must not influence the trial.
That distinction matters. A prima facie finding under the UAPA bail framework is not a conviction, and the prosecution allegations remain to be tested through trial. The accused have denied the prosecution case and have repeatedly relied on the length of custody and slow progress of proceedings as grounds for release.
The Supreme Court later rejected a uniform approach
On 5 January 2026, the Supreme Court partly changed the bail position. It granted conditional bail to Gulfisha Fatima, Meeran Haider, Shifa-ur-Rehman, Mohd Saleem Khan and Shadab Ahmed while refusing bail to Khalid and Imam. The Court said the prosecution attributed materially different roles to the accused and therefore assessed them individually rather than treating prolonged detention as having the same consequence for everyone.
For Khalid and Imam, the Supreme Court said the material attributed to them at that stage placed them in a different category from the five co-accused who received bail. It again limited those observations to bail and directed the trial to proceed with expedition. The judgment also left open a renewed bail request after protected witnesses were examined or after one year from the order, whichever came earlier.
Why prolonged detention still remains a live constitutional issue
The January judgment did not treat Article 21 and the right to personal liberty as irrelevant. In a later May 2026 UAPA decision, the Supreme Court described its January approach as a calibrated, accused-specific assessment and said prolonged incarceration remains a continuing constitutional consideration rather than a one-time argument that disappears after bail is refused.
This creates the central tension in the record: UAPA places a demanding statutory restriction on bail where accusations are found prima facie true, but the constitutional cost of years of pre-trial detention increases as proceedings continue. The legal question is therefore not simply whether detention is long, or whether the allegations are serious, but how courts evaluate both in the circumstances of each accused.
Fresh 2026 bail effort is still unresolved
On 4 July 2026, a Delhi trial court rejected fresh bail applications by Khalid and Imam, holding that the conditions set by the Supreme Court for renewing their pleas had not yet been satisfied. Khalid appealed to the Delhi High Court, which issued notice on 31 July; Imam’s related appeal was also pending.
Delhi Police opposed the renewed High Court pleas in August, arguing that they were premature under the Supreme Court’s January directions and maintaining the prosecution’s allegation that Khalid and Imam held central roles in the alleged conspiracy. Those are prosecution submissions, not findings of guilt.
The High Court matters were listed for 27 August 2026, but that date was declared a court holiday. They were then listed on 31 August, when the division bench could not assemble because both judges were on leave. The court master directed that the matters be listed again on 21 September 2026. As of 13 September 2026, the fresh appeals therefore remain pending.
What the evidence supports
The record supports three conclusions. First, the September 2025 High Court denial was real but was only one stage in a continuing bail history. Second, the Supreme Court’s January 2026 ruling shows that long incarceration did not produce a single group-wide outcome: five co-accused were released while Khalid and Imam remained detained because the Court treated the alleged roles and evidentiary position as different at the bail stage. Third, prolonged pre-trial detention remains a live constitutional issue even under the UAPA’s restrictive framework, but it does not automatically override Section 43D(5).
The initiating Ravishnews reel captured a genuine civil-liberties controversy around years of detention without a concluded trial. Its rhetoric should not be converted into a legal verdict, just as bail refusals should not be converted into findings of guilt. The unresolved public-interest question is how long restrictive pre-trial detention can remain justified as the prosecution and trial continue, a question the pending September 2026 appeals have not yet finally answered.
