No bail for Indian activists after five years in jail without trial

BBC:

Two prominent student activists in India have been denied bail after being held in prison for more than five years without trial.

India’s Supreme Court on Monday rejected pleas of Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam, who were arrested after the 2020 Delhi riots.

Police accused them of conspiracy to incite deadly clashes in the capital that killed 53 people, mostly Muslims. They were held under strict anti-terror laws that make bail difficult. They denied the charges and unsuccessfully applied for bail in courts over the years.

The court, however, granted bail to five other activists who were also arrested in the same case.

The riots occurred amid months-long protests against a citizenship law that the United Nations called “fundamentally discriminatory”.

In its order on Monday morning, the two-judge bench said the bail petitions of all the seven accused had to be examined individually since they were not on “equal footing as regards culpability”, reported legal website Bar and Bench.

The judges said they were making a distinction between the charges that were levelled against Khalid and Imam from the others while denying them bail.

The court added that the petitioners could apply for bail again only after one year.

Khalid completed his PhD in 2019 from Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University. Imam was a doctoral scholar at the time of his arrest at the same university. Both men are 37.

The case of the jailed activists has attracted a lot of attention in India and globally.