Prolonged Incarceration, And Limits Of Article 21 In UAPA: SC In 2020 Delhi Riots Case

The Supreme Court on Monday attempted to balance a citizen’s fundamental right to freedom under Article 21 with statutory restrictions imposed on seven accused in the 2020 Delhi Riots case.

While deciding the appeals filed by seven accused, including Umar Khalid, Sharjeel Imam, and Gulfisha Fatima, a bench comprising Justices Aravind Kumar and NV Anjaria clarified that, “The constitutional inquiry into delay is not an inquiry into guilt. It is an inquiry into whether continued detention remains constitutionally permissible in the circumstances of the case.” The court looked at the bail issue as a question of how constitutional courts should apply Article 21 within a bail regime determined by the legislature.

FIR 59 of 2020 and the Prosecution Narrative

The case before the top bench was from FIR No. 59 of 2020, which was registered by the Delhi Police Crime Branch in March 2020. According to the prosecution, the accused had planned the protests linked to the Citizenship Amendment Act with a view to instigating communal violence in North-East Delhi in February 2020.

The court noted that, “The prosecution case is founded on allegations of a pre-planned criminal conspiracy involving several accused persons, including the present appellants. It is alleged that the conspiracy was hatched with the object of orchestrating riots in the National Capital Territory of Delhi as a form of protest against the enactment of the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 and the proposed National Register of Citizens.”

Describing the allegations against the accused as “grave,” the court noted that “The riots are stated to have resulted in grave consequences, including the loss of 54 lives… grievous injuries to several police personnel and civilians… and extensive damage… alongside substantial intangible harm to public order, social harmony, and the nation at large.”

Inordinate Delays in Trial, and Article 21

The court considered each accused’s bail plea separately, noting that criminal law does not require treating all accused in one FIR the same if their roles differ. The court also addressed a common argument: the seven accused had been in jail for over five years without trial, and such prolonged detention violates fundamental rights under Article 21 (right to liberty) of the Constitution.

Acknowledging that five years without trial was serious, the top court said that, “Prolonged custody undoubtedly implicates the constitutional guarantee of personal liberty under Article 21 of the Constitution, and such a plea cannot be rejected on the basis of duration alone without a careful and fact-sensitive examination.”

However, the court rejected the argument that delay alone was enough to override the special statutory provisions of the UAPA, saying that mere delay did not warrant bail given the seriousness of the charges.

“The jurisprudence of this Court does not support a construction whereby delay simpliciter eclipses a statutory regime enacted by Parliament to address offences of a special category,” said the court.

The court said delay cannot be the “sole determinant” of whether bail should be granted under UAPA.

“The consequence of the above is that Najeeb must be understood as a principled safeguard against unconscionable detention… It is not, however, the sole determinant,” said the court.

Article 21 and Section 43D(5) UAPA

The court rejected the argument that statutory restraint and constitutional liberty were a black-and-white issue.

“The proper constitutional question… is not whether Article 21 is superior to Section 43D (5). The proper question is how Article 21 is to be applied where Parliament has expressly conditioned the grant of bail in relation to offences alleged to implicate national security,” said the court.

Treating statutory restrictions as absolute and using delay as an automatic ground for bail were both dangerous, said the Supreme Court. “What it excludes is a mechanical override based on time alone, divorced from legal context,” the judges explained.

The Court laid out an approach that considers several factors, including the nature of the allegations, each accused’s role, the stage of proceedings, reasons for trial delay, and risks of releasing the accused.

Complexity of Trial and Attribution of Delay

The court further said that the prosecution alone could not be blamed for the inordinate delay in this case, given the complexity of the issue and the number of accused. “The present prosecution… involves multiple accused persons, voluminous documentary and electronic evidence, and allegations of a structured and continuing conspiracy,” the court said.

“The procedural history and order sheets do not support the assertion that the delay is attributable to prosecutorial inaction or judicial inaction.”

This finding became important in assessing whether continued detention had crossed the threshold into unconstitutional punishment.

Different Roles Of Accused To Be Considered

The court said each accused’s case was different depending on how involved they were in the alleged conspiracy.

“To conflate operational responsibility with command responsibility at the bail stage would risk imposing a regime of undifferentiated incarceration antithetical to the principle that liberty may only be withheld where contemporaneous and individualised grounds compel such curtailment.”

Applying this framework, the Court granted bail to five accused while denying it to two others, finding the latter more culpable because of their greater involvement in the alleged conspiracy.

The court judgment contrasted the roles of Gulfisha Fatima and four others with those of Umar Khalid and Shajeel Imam, saying the two had direct and central roles in the 2020 Delhi riots.

“Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam are alleged to have conceptualised and directed the overarching plan,” said the court.

Shadab Ahmed’s Case

Dealing with Shadab Ahmed’s bail plea, the court allowed his bail, saying that, “In the absence of such necessity, indefinite pre-trial detention would assume a punitive character inconsistent with constitutional guarantees of personal liberty under Article 21.”

The top bench added that, “Pre-trial detention cannot be justified merely to await the vicissitudes of trial when the evidentiary record is substantially crystallised.”

Gulfisha Fatima’s Case

In Gulfisha Fatima’s appeal, the Court recorded submissions by the defence lawyers and prosecution. The defence lawyers had stressed that Fatima had been in jail since 2020 and was not accused of any overt violent acts.

The prosecution had said that Fatima was “an indispensable link in the conspiracy chain.”

While granting bail to five of the accused the court said, “Article 21 protects individual liberty. It also, within the same guarantee of life, reflects the State’s obligation to protect the life and security of the community.” It further added that, “The constitutional order is not served by an approach that treats liberty as the sole value and societal security as peripheral.”