How Long is Too Long? Umar, Gulfisha, Sharjeel and the Crisis of Credibility in Indian Courts

EVERYTHING GOT DONE WITHIN a matter of seconds. To a couple of non-lawyer friends, it seemed appalling, the brevity of it all. But court practitioners know this is how fates get sealed in our courts — matter name/number is called out, judgment is pronounced, the next item gets taken up. Business as usual. 

The suddenness of the dismissal in this case however was accentuated by the peculiarity of facts. Those few seconds carried the weight of five plus years. This is a trial which, whenever this nightmare is over, would be taught in law school classrooms as the most enduring evidence of India’s Jim Crow era.

Six of these accused have already undergone more than five years of incarceration without a trial. Arguments on charges are yet to be completed. Even if the trial were to start, around 700 witnesses would have to be examined to complete deposition. These facts alone would merit bail; any conscientious constitutional court would not bother going into the specifics of the case. But this trial is important to India’s ruling dispensation; its players feed directly into the bogey of faux nationalism, the life breath of this government’s existence and continuation. Umar, Sharjeel, Gulfisha and others are, quite rightly put, “prisoners of the Hindutva state”.

The order rejecting bail runs into 133 pages, and is divided into four parts. Umar and Sharjeel have been dealt with together. At the outset, it is telling that the period of incarceration does not seem to perturb the Court even once. For perspective, Sharjeel has been imprisoned for 2044 days now; Umar, for 1815 days. The Delhi High Court simply takes the prosecution’s word at face value and accepts its frivolous plea that Sharjeel and Umar were ‘the intellectual architects behind the entire conspiracy’, ‘having delivered inflammatory speeches on communal lines to instigate a mass mobilisation of members of the Muslim Community’.

Grounds for this conclusion are: (a) creation and exchange of messages in WhatsApp groups; (b) speeches calling for bandhs, chakka jam and non-cooperation; and (c) distribution of pamphlets. We can keep wondering if in a country, which achieved independence based on the ideals of non-cooperation and civil disobedience, ‘mass mobilisation’ should invite terrorism charges. That’s a conversation this Court is unwilling to have because it does not seem to have the gumption. It is executive-trusting and perhaps, it considers the life and liberty of a handful of youngsters a valid trade-off in the great game of nation-building. It is a Court in the service of the State, beholden to political expediency and not to any constitutional principle.