Four and a half years. A neat statistic on paper, nearly half a decade. But in a prison cell, where time slows to a merciless crawl, 4.5 years is an abyss—an eternity of stolen moments, of festivals forgotten, of friends moving away, of time when your parents age, of love letters never written, of seasons that changed behind the same unyielding bars. It is a slow suffocation, a life trapped in a loop of waiting—waiting for a hearing, waiting for a trial, waiting for justice that never comes.
Four and a half years ago, Umar Khalid was a PhD scholar, a thinker, a man who dared to believe in a 'just' India. Today, he is a prisoner of the state, his freedom stripped not by a conviction but by a system that has turned the process of justice into the biggest punishment itself. His crime? He spoke truth. He resisted injustice. He believed that his country belonged to all its people, regardless of religion, caste, or creed.
Imagine What All Happens in 4.5 Years
People graduate. They fall in love. They start families. Children are born, they get a name and learn their first words, their first steps. In 4.5 years, life unfolds. But not for Umar Khalid. His life has been put on pause by a judiciary that moves only when the powerful demand it. For him and others jailed under the draconian UAPA for protesting the CAA-NRC, these years have been reduced to a relentless cycle of courtrooms, metal bars, and an eternal silence that rings behind these dark cells meant not for students and scholars.
Gulfisha Fatima, one of the many imprisoned in this case, captured this unbearable void in a poem:
“In the darkness of last night,
On the gates of the prison
there was, a knock of innocent winds,
of echoes of loved ones,
the lightning too,
screaming and appealing for mercy,
demanded our release.”
But the walls do not listen. The bars do not move. And the courts, time and again, look away.
The Injustice of the Process
Umar Khalid was arrested on 13 September 2020 in connection with the Delhi Riots conspiracy case, where the draconian Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) was invoked against him. He was one of 18 accused, including Sharjeel Imam, Khalid Saifi, Meeran Haider, Safoora Zargar, Gulfisha Fatima, Shifaur Rehman, and other activists, students, and citizens who had been vocal against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). The trial in this case has not even begun. Arguments on charges are still dragging on in a Delhi court. His bail plea is being heard by the Delhi High Court for the second time since December 2024.
This is not the justice system at work. This is the justice system failing. Bail should be the norm, not the exception. In criminal jurisprudence, the right to bail exists to prevent precisely this kind of pre-trial incarceration. Yet, in cases like these, where the state weaponises anti-terror laws to curb dissent, the process itself becomes a punishment, one that extracts years from people’s lives without ever delivering a verdict.
From the very beginning, the case against Umar Khalid has been riddled with inconsistencies. In FIR 59, that deals with the so-called 'conspiracy behind the 2020 Delhi riots', he has been charged under multiple sections of the IPC, including rioting (Sections 147 and 148), murder (Section 302), and unlawful assembly (Section 149). Under UAPA, he faces allegations of unlawful activities (Section 13), terrorist activities (Sections 16 to 18), and conspiracy (Section 18).
But what does the prosecution rely on? A speech.
A speech in which he spoke about unity, about peaceful resistance. In his own words, “We will not respond to violence with violence. We will not respond to hate with hate. If they spread hate, we will respond to it by spreading love.” That is the foundation of the charges against him. A call for non-violence is being treated as an act of terror.
In July 2021, Umar Khalid first moved the Delhi Sessions Court for bail. It took eight months for the court to deny his plea in March 2022. In April 2022, he approached the Delhi High Court. In October 2022, his plea was rejected. Ironically, Justice Siddharth Mridul, who had previously granted bail to Asif Iqbal Tanha, Devangana Kalita, and Natasha Narwal in the same case, citing the government’s attempt to blur the lines between protest and terrorism, denied Umar Khalid the same relief.
In April 2023, he moved the Supreme Court. In August, Justice PK Mishra recused himself from the case. His bail plea was reassigned to a new bench, only to be deferred 14 times over the next several months. By February 2024, with no hearing in sight, Khalid withdrew his petition.
Since March 2024, he has been back at the Sessions Court for bail. His plea was rejected again in May 2024, pushing him back to the Delhi High Court. Another cycle of delays, another loop of uncertainty.
At some point, we as a people also need to ask, is half a decade of suffering behind that lifeless darkness of jail cells justified for someone who has not even gotten a trial? What is the point of a trial if the punishment is completed before it even begins? What is the point of charges being squashed after so many years if someone has already been punished?
At some point we need to ask, how long does it take for justice to rot? How long before a person’s spirit is crushed under the weight of an invisible gavel?
The Invisible Sentence: The Families Who Suffer
Who will return these 4.5 years to his parents, who have grown older in his absence, without his care, who have not had a son to take them to doctors or bring them the basic joys of life? Who wake up every day knowing their son is behind bars for a crime he never committed? Who will return them to his sisters, who carry the unbearable guilt of moving forward in life while he remains caged? What do his nieces and nephews say when they ask why their uncle, who once told them stories and gave them books, is locked away like a criminal? Or when they, after not seeing him for so many years, can’t even recognise him?
And it is not just Umar Khalid. Gulfisha Fatima, a brilliant painter and teacher, has spent years in jail while the life she could have built slips away. Khalid Saifi’s children grow up without their father. Sharjeel Imam’s mother endures the agony of separation from her son. Shifa-Ur-Rehman’s wife and son navigate life without him. Families of Meeran Haider, Athar Khan, Saleem Khan, Tahir Hussain, Saleem Malik, and Shadab live in an endless state of uncertainty. These are not just names. These are lives that have been put on hold indefinitely. Their families and loved ones go through birthdays, weddings, funerals, festivals, and ordinary days knowing that someone they love is unjustly locked away. They deal with the bureaucratic and emotional toll of endless court visits, exhausting legal procedures, and the helplessness of waiting.
Who will be held accountable for these stolen years?
These are not just names in an FIR. They are lives. Stolen futures. Families that continue living, but never truly move on.
A Judiciary That Fails Its People
Justice delayed is justice denied. But in cases like these, justice is not just delayed, it is deliberately denied. The courts, meant to protect the innocent, have instead become complicit in their suffering. When bail is a privilege, when trials are indefinitely postponed, when voices of dissent are silenced through imprisonment, the judiciary does not serve justice, it serves power in ensuring those who disagree with the ones in power, for them the process of finding Justice will become punishment in itself.
This is not just about one man. It is about a system that punishes thought, that imprisons dissent, that calls peaceful protest a conspiracy. It is about an India where those who speak against oppression are branded criminals, while those who incite hate, call for hurt upon a set of minority openly, roam free.
Four and a half years is not just a number. It is stolen time, stolen youth, stolen justice.
And the question remains:
If the judiciary will not protect the innocent, who will?
(Nabiya Khan is a poet and a researcher based in New Delhi. This is an opinion piece. The views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)