Mamdani Backs Modi Critic Jailed Without End

The NYC mayor supports dissident leader Umar Khalid, jailed five years without bail in a deliberate attempt to turn the process into punishment, writes Betwa Sharma.

By Betwa Sharma
in Delhi, India
Special to Consortium News

Eight members of the U.S. Congress and the new mayor of New York City have spoken up for him.

More than five years after he was arrested and jailed without facing trial, the Supreme Court of India this month denied bail to Umar Khalid, a 38-year-old political activist and prominent Muslim voice of dissent who has become an international symbol of resistance. 

Khalid has been unafraid of opposing Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government even as Islamophobia and the targeting of government critics have intensified.

The State has accused Khalid and other Muslim activists of plotting the communal violence that erupted in Delhi in February 2020 in a terrorism case widely criticised as politically motivated and shown to be poorly investigated, with flimsy evidence used to support a predetermined narrative.

Eight American lawmakers of the Democratic Party wrote to the Indian ambassador to the U.S. that Khalid’s years-long incarceration without trial was unfair and against international law. They urged that he get a fair and timely hearing and be presumed innocent until proven guilty.

The new mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, wrote a hand-written letter to Khalid after meeting with his parents. Mamdani wrote: “Dear Umar, I think of your words on bitterness often, and the importance of not letting it consume one’s self.  …  “We are all thinking of you.”

Every sane and good-hearted person in the world is thinking of Umar Khalid.

Mamdani is simply one of many millions. pic.twitter.com/6Qfys7m9fq

— Darab Farooqui (@darab_farooqui) January 2, 2026

India hit back against Mamdani, whose father is an Indian Muslim.  Ministry of External Affairs’ official spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said on Jan 1o:

“We expect public representatives to be respectful of the independence of judiciary in other democracies. Expressing personal prejudices do not behove those in office. Instead of such comments, it would be better to focus on the responsibilities entrusted to them.”

The Delhi Urest

Fifty-three people lost their lives in the riots in low-income neighbourhoods in northeast Delhi Feb. 23-25, 2020. Most of them were Muslim.

Yet in all the courts where Khalid’s bail pleas have been denied, no judge has asked a basic question: if this was a conspiracy plotted by Muslims, how did it end with most of the victims being Muslim themselves?

Khalid, a PhD in history, has become a polarising figure in India, hailed by supporters as a symbol of resistance, and bashed by the Hindu right-wing ecosystem and self-styled patriots as being part of the so-called “Bharat Tukde Tukde Gang,” which refers to people with different ideologies and political views who supposedly want to break up India.

Shot in 2018

While a student at Jawaharlal Nehru University in 2016, Khalid faced a sedition case over a campus protest against the hanging of the 2001 Parliament attack convict, Afzal Guru, where controversial slogans were allegedly raised.

He co-founded United Against Hate in 2017 as mob lynchings of Muslims were on the rise in India, which campaigns against religious intolerance.

In 2018, Khalid was shot at by a gunman in Delhi.

In the two months leading up to the Delhi riots, Khalid was involved in a popular movement led by Indian Muslims protesting the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) of 2019 — a highly controversial law that effectively made religion the basis for granting Indian citizenship.

It is a potentially nation-changing law that undermines the secular pluralism advocated by India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, which has underpinned India’s democracy.

That the movement against the law was able to sustain itself and spread across multiple cities — when Muslims were expected to be beaten down after years of violence and humiliation — stunned the Modi government.

The police filed a murder, sedition and unlawful assembly case placing the blame for the Delhi riots squarely on those involved in the anti-CAA movement, including Khalid, alleging that the protests were part of a deliberate plan to incite violence at a time when U.S. President Donald Trump was visiting Delhi in February 2020, in order to draw maximum international attention.

Why The Movement Arose

The CAA, passed by Parliament in December 2019, provided a path to Indian citizenship for Hindus, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Jains — but not Muslims — coming from India’s Muslim-majority neighbours: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan.

While the Modi government insisted that Indian Muslims had nothing to fear from the CAA, Home Minister Amit Shah’s repeated remarks about conducting a nationwide survey to identify illegal immigrants, and his reference to immigrants from Bangladesh as “termites,” along with the Islamophobia since 2014, deeply alarmed the community.

This fear gave rise to a movement that, although led by and largely attended by Muslims, also drew in people concerned about the erosion of minority rights, civil liberties, and democratic freedoms.

A Pre-Determined Narrative & Flawed Evidence

With no physical evidence tying Khalid and the other Muslim activists to the actual violence during the three days of rioting, the police’s so-called “larger conspiracy case” relies largely on testimonies from anonymous witnesses.

Many of these witnesses gave similar statements against the accused and the protests, including at least one that was dismissed by a trial court judge.

The police grouped together protesters who often have no connection to one another, and portrayed harmless activities, like organising meetings or posting on WhatsApp groups, as if they were part of something sinister.

The police cannot explain why some were charged while others doing similar work were not.

“With no physical evidence tying Khalid and the other Muslim activists to the actual violence during the three days of rioting, the police’s so-called ‘larger conspiracy case’ relies largely on testimonies from anonymous witnesses.”

A lower court magistrate gave a stunning order last year telling the police to investigate Mishra in a move that should be routine for any judge but became distinctly brave in India in the current climate. The judge criticised the police investigation against the Muslim activists as having “numerous flaws in such theory building and [much] guesswork.” 

The order was swiftly put on hold  by a senior judge.

The police’s incompetence and its questionable motives have been exposed in other criminal cases brought in connection with the Delhi riots, many of which have been dismissed, with the court scolding the police for shoddy investigations and “fabricated” evidence — but stopping short of holding anyone accountable.

In one case, for instance, a Delhi police investigating officer framed nine Muslims for an attack on a Muslim-run eatery by a Hindu mob.

No Rules For Bail

Khalid’s bail has been rejected five times — twice by a trial court, twice by the Delhi High Court, and now by the Supreme Court on Jan. 5 — despite the Supreme Court’s principle that jail, not bail, should be the exception. 

Trial courts are often wary and reluctant to grant bail the moment the police invoke India’s stringent anti-terror law, the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), 1967.

The police often invoke the Act just to shut the door on bail.

The only real hope for relief, then, lies with the constitutional courts.

Four and a half years ago, when granting bail to three of Khalid’s co-accused, two judges of the Delhi High Court ruled there was no prima facie case of terrorism.

They said that blocking roads — chakka jams — didn’t amount to terrorism, and that the state had blurred the lines between terrorism and protest.

They said, “shorn-off the superfluous verbiage, hyperbole and the stretched inferences,” there was no case made out under the UAPA and that the “making of inflammatory speeches [and] organising chakka jams are not uncommon” when there is widespread opposition to the government. 

The Supreme Court stayed the High Court’s interpretation of the law.

Since then, despite the demonstrable weaknesses and questionable motives of the police force investigating the riots, the courts have accepted the State’s case as prima facie true.

The Supreme Court ruled that Khalid could not apply for bail for another year, or until the witnesses have been examined.

The court’s claim that the incarcerated Khalid could influence the witnesses is something the police could probably prevent. 

Process Is the Punishment

India has a serious crisis of undertrials — prisoners being held awaiting trial. They are languishing in jail for years as cases move at a glacial pace through the courts. An overwhelmed judicial system often displays a deep apathy towards them.

However, the proceedings in Khalid’s case go beyond the systemic problem of undertrial detention. They were a deliberate attempt to turn the process into a punishment.

Some of Khalid’s co-accused — now granted bail — spent close to six years in jail without trial. Some had their bail pleas pending for three years before the Delhi High Court. They had to argue their cases three times before three different benches.

But now that his co-accused have gotten bail there is no cause to keep Khalid in jail. He is being held as an example because as an emerging leader he was becoming the voice of the Muslim community. 

The message from an authoritarian government, now seemingly backed by the courts, appears to be: speak up and young Muslims could be punished indefinitely.

Betwa Sharma is the managing editor of Article 14, the former politics editor at HuffPost India, and the former U.N./New York correspondent for the Press Trust of India. She has also reported for numerous publications, including The New York Times and The Intercept.

Views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.