Adjournments nibble away at personal liberty, UAPA consumes youth: https://theleaflet.in/adjournments-nibble-away-at-personal-liberty-uapa-consumes-youth-umar-khalid-completes-three-years-in-prison/
Gursimran Kaur Bakshi·September 19, 2023 Umar Khalid completes three years in prison
Between 2016 to 2019, 5,922 persons were arrested under the UAPA and only 132 have been convicted. Of those arrested in 2018–20 under the UAPA, 53 percent are persons below thirty years of age, as per the statistics of the Ministry of Home Affairs.
Access to justice is really all about the right to be heard. However, Khalid has become a victim of the court’s constant adjournments, unannounced recusals and the prosecution counsel’s unavailability.
The Supreme Court will have to navigate its way through a seventeen-thousand-page chargesheet filed against Khalid and hundreds of witnesses to impart justice to a scholar. When the Supreme Court came to the rescue of journalists Teesta Setalvad and Arnab Goswami saying “deprivation of liberty even for a single day is one day too many”, should not three years of youth be enough for the court to at least give a fair hearing to Khalid?