New Delhi: Banojyotsna Lahiri, a Delhi-based researcher, recalled that one of the first judges of the Supreme Court who was assigned her partner Umar Khalid’s bail petition said it would take “two minutes” to complete the proceedings.
Khalid, a 36-year-old political activist, accused of instigating Hindu-Muslims riots in Delhi in February 2020, had filed his bail petition in May. It was 12 July when a bench of Justice AS Bopanna and Justice M M Sundresh said it was a matter that “may take one or two minutes” when the State asked for more time to file a response to the chargesheet running into “thousands of page” even though the court was convening after more than a month-long summer break.
When the judges refused to extend the next hearing beyond 24 July, Banojyotsna felt assured that the proceedings in the country’s highest court would take a fraction of the time it took for Khalid’s bail hearings to be completed in the district court and the Delhi High Court.
With both sides making more extensive arguments than are typical at the stage of bail, the State seeking adjournments as a delaying tactic, scheduling conflicts of lawyers and judges, and illnesses as well as courts slowing during the pandemic, it took six months in the high court for proceedings (May 2022 to October 2022) and eight months in the sessions court (August 2021 to March 2022) to get a verdict.
Despite the demonstrably weak case against Khalid and the courts granting bail to some of his co-defendants, the same judges denied bail to Khalid, whose stature as a symbol of resistance to the authoritarianism and majoritarianism that has thrived under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party has grown in his three years and three months behind bars.
The Supreme Court, contrary to its own jurisprudence of hearing bail pleas quickly (here and here), has surpassed lower courts with a delay of seven months in hearing Khalid’s arguments for bail even though the matter has been listed 10 times before different judges since May 2023.
This story was originally published in article-14.com. Read the full story here .
