The Supreme Court delivered on Monday a significant ruling on personal liberty under India's stringent anti-terror law while disapproving a January 2026 judgment that had denied bail to Delhi riots accused Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam.
SC gave its ruling reaffirming that even under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, "bail is the rule and jail is the exception."
A bench of Justices BV Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan made the observations while granting bail to Syed Iftikhar Andrabi, a UAPA accused from Jammu and Kashmir who had spent over six years in custody on allegations of funding terrorist organisations through narcotics proceeds.
The bench used the occasion to lay down the law on what lower benches can and cannot do with binding precedents from larger benches.
What SC Said About Umar Khalid Case?
The court expressed reservations about the two-judge bench ruling in Gulfisha Fatima v. State — which had denied bail to Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam in the Delhi riots larger conspiracy case — saying it did not properly follow the three-judge bench judgment in Union of India v. KA Najeeb (2021), which had recognised prolonged delay in trial as a ground for bail in UAPA cases.
The judgment authored by Justice Bhuyan laid out the core constitutional concern in stark terms.
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"If this test is accepted, the State needs only satisfy a low prima facie threshold while the trial may continue for years, with the result that pre-trial incarceration begins to acquire a post-trial punitive character. And even then, no court will ever grant bail, no matter the length of period of such incarceration, because the case is prima facie true," the judgment warned.
The bench was unambiguous on the binding nature of KA Najeeb. "We make it clear that KA Najeeb is binding law and entitled to the protection of stare decisis. It cannot be diluted, circumvented or disregarded by the trial court, the High Court or even by benches of lower strength of this Court," Justice Bhuyan stated.
The Broader Principle
On the foundational principle, the Court left no room for doubt. "Even under the UAPA, bail is the rule and jail is the exception," it held, adding that "judicial discipline and certainty demand that benches of smaller strength are mindful of the decisions rendered by larger benches and are bound to follow the same."
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Umar Khalid has been in custody since September 2020, accused of being a key conspirator in the February 2020 Delhi riots under UAPA. His bail has been denied multiple times.
Monday's ruling, while not directly granting him bail, formally disapproves the legal reasoning used to keep him incarcerated — and sets a precedent that his lawyers are likely to invoke in future proceedings.
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