Stenographer for the Prosecution: The Bail Order in Umar Khalid’s Case Gautam Bhatia 24 March 2022 https://indconlawphil.wordpress.com/2022/03/24/stenographer-for-the-prosecution-the-bail-order-in-umar-khalids-case/ Also avaliable at https://thewire.in/law/umar-khalid-denied-bail-order-uapa-judiciary-stenographer-prosecution
a close reading of the sixty-one page long bail order, the denial of bail to Umar Khalid is based entirely upon an act of judicial stenography: the Court reproduces the statements in the chargesheet, refuses to examine them on their own terms, refuses to engage with the defence’s examination of them, and finally – and most importantly – fills in inferences of guilt where the prosecution’s case is vague or missing particulars.
The implications of this are both obvious and frightening. The bail order takes us to a position where the Prosecution can write literally anything in its UAPA chargesheet – vague, inconsistent, implausible, ex facie false, things that you would laugh at if someone presented them to you and tried to make your believe them – and we will have a bail order that will reproduce those statements, park all objections for a trial that will not finish for the next ten years, and ensure that people remain in jail all that time. This is the embodiment of a broken criminal justice system – broken not just by the UAPA and its language, but broken by judges who, somewhere in all this, seem to have forgotten the judicial role as being one that tempers and confronts State abuse.
The bail order takes us to a position where the prosecution can write literally anything in its UAPA chargesheet and the court will park all objections for a trial that will not finish for the next ten years.
These courts have pointed out that, given how strict the UAPA’s threshold requirement is for granting bail, it behoves the judge to subject the prosecution’s case (which is the only case that exists at the time of bail) to equally strict scrutiny: both on the necessity of factual evidence being concrete and specific, and on the question of whether the legal standard under the UAPA is made out.
Inquilab Zindabad slogan will stay relevant till people continue their struggle against diverse inequalities https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/the-idealism-behind-inquilab-zindabad-indian-freedom-struggle-umar-khalid-delhi-high-court-7941740/
S Irfan Habib writes: Now, it’s at the centre of a Delhi High Court deliberation which sought to know the context in which Umar Khalid, accused in the February 2020 riots in the Capital, used the term inquilab, with the judge saying that ‘revolution’ by itself “isn’t always bloodless”.
Bhagat Singh was even more definitive in his statement in the court on June 6, 1929. He said: “Revolution (Inquilab) is not a culture of bomb and pistol. Our meaning of revolution is to change the present conditions, which are based on manifest injustice.” Bhagat Singh agrees with a quote he cites in his prison diary, which says a radical revolution is not utopian, “What is utopian is the idea of a partial, an exclusively political revolution, which would leave the pillars of the house standing.”
The HSRA aimed at such a revolution (Inquilab) which would usher in a new era, demolishing the existing socio-economic and political structure of the Indian society. Their revolution was not for anarchy or lawlessness but for social justice.
Thus, we need to comprehend the meaning of Inquilab or revolution and the slogan Inquilab Zindabad in the context of its history. It will stay relevant till the people continue their struggle against diverse inequalities and oppressions.
Delhi HC Faults Umar Khalid's Remarks Against PM Modi Again https://thewire.in/rights/delhi-hc-faults-umar-khalids-remarks-against-pm-modi-again Hearing his bail plea, the court said that he 'could have used some other words' for the PM in his February 2020 speech while saying that a call for revolution need 'not [be] necessarily bloodless'.