Six Years Without Trial: Can Prolonged UAPA Incarceration Become Unconstitutional?

Umar Khalid has spent almost 6 years in custody now in the alleged conspiracy case behind 2020’s northeast Delhi riots. The significance of this period of imprisonment is not merely a numerical figure. It is a long enough duration for relationships to change, careers to disappear, families to reorganise and ordinary individuals to transform. Yet Umar remains an accused, not a convicted person; no guilt has yet been established still he is forced to spend almost the possible convicted sentence ( if got convicted) duration as an undertrial prisoner.

The important question is not whether the allegations against Umar are serious; they are inevitably are: The larger question is whether the Hon'ble Supreme Court's recent denial of bail to him and Sharjeel Imam in Gulfisha Fatima v. State (NCT of Delhi) needs to be revisited. Is prolonged incarceration for an indefinite period, without the possibility of completing or meaningful progress in the trial, constitutionally valid?

Challenging the constitutional validity of section 43d(5) is not the contention of the present piece; rather, it asks and poses the question for the readers whether a constitutionally valid statutory restriction, in its application to an individual case, can ultimately contradict the very principle of the right to life and personal liberty guaranteed by Article 21 of the Indian Constitution. According to the authors, these special laws can undoubtedly make the procedure for bail difficult, but they cannot push a lawfully deemed innocent individuals to be imprisoned for an indefinite period of time without any remarkable progress in the trial.

1. An Accused is not a Convict:

The constitutional critique of draconian, prolonged incarceration began even before the enactment of the stringent UAPA Act; this began with the adoption of the right to life and personal liberty under Article 21 of the Constitution. Article 21 expressly lays down that no person shall be deprived of their right to life and personal liberty except by procedure established by law. Over the decades, our Apex Court has transformed and strengthened this constitutional principle. In Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India, it establishes that procedure depriving a person’s liberty must not be arbitrary, unfair or unreasonable and shall satisfy the standard of fairness. These restrictions on state rights are also applicable to special statutes like UAPA; thus, they cannot arbitrarily infringe individual liberty by completely denying the right to approach the Hon’ble Court for bail.

Our Hon'ble Supreme Court recently applied this constitutional principle in Tapas Kumar Palit v. State of Chhattisgarh, where it dealt with an accused person under stringent UAPA provisions who had been in custody for approximately 5 years. While examining the matter, the Court observed that hundreds of witnesses were yet to be examined by the prosecution and that there was no indication of the trial's recent completion; thus, it believed that further incarceration was likely to infringe the accused's right to life and personal liberty enshrined and guaranteed by the Constitution. Believing this, the Court granted him bail.

The right to a speedy trial has become one of the imperative rights guaranteed within the ambit of Article 21. The philosophy behind this right is that if an accused is ultimately to receive a verdict only after completing a complex trial, which can take at least half a decade or more, then why to spend such a duration of their life, despite being innocent in the eyes of the law, as an undertrial prisoner behind bars? This is the simple reason the pre-trial prolong detention becomes any special and serious constitutional issue.

No doubt that the seriousness of an allegation may justify a stringent statutory regime to safeguard state security and integrity. However, such seriousness cannot in any way justify a criminal process without a reasonable end. An individual liberty cannot merely be compromised because the offence alleged is grave. We believe the more serious the accusation is, the greater the authorities' responsibility to ensure the protection of the accused from an abuse of power by the prosecution and ultimately guarantee the adjudication of the trial in a constitutionally permissible manner and period.

The arguments and authorities cited above are not against the state's power to prosecute the serious offence. It is believed that the state has the power to prosecute; it has the power to investigate, and even Parliament has the authority to enact stringent bail restrictions, but this does not give the state the power to suspend individual liberty indefinitely by disregarding the established criminal justice system, which seeks speedy trial and speedy justice. The constitutional problem is not the enactment of stringent statutes like UAPA, but the prolonged incarceration under these stringent statutes, and the difficulty becomes even more serious when an innocent accused has to spend years and decades behind bars while the trial has yet to commence.

2. Section 43D(5) is not Absolute:

Section 43D(5) provides that: “an accused charged with offences under Chapters IV and VI shall not be released on bail where, upon examining the case diary or the report under Section 173 of the Code, the court is of the opinion that there are reasonable grounds for believing that the accusation is prima facie true.” This provision is explicit departure from the well-established bail jurisprudence where ‘bail is the rule and gel is the exception.’ Such provisions put burden of proof upon the accused rather than on the prosecution as a general norm.

The most significant problem under this provision is It's deviation from the principal that an accused liberty should not be ordinarily compromised mainly because the state has alleged him for particular offence. However, under this stringent provision, the court must undertake a preliminary assessment of the prosecution allegations and if they encounter that any statutory threshold is crossed, it become exceptionally difficult for the Courts to overcome from these stringent provisions and grant innocent accused the bail. The Supreme Court judgment of National Investigation Agency v. Zahoor Ahmad Shah Watali is the perfect testimony of the application of such stringent provisions by judiciary.

But meanwhile it is important to understand that Section 43D(4) is not absolute and does not anywhere mention that a person charged under UAPA must remained imprisoned indefinitely or until the trial ends, No does it anywhere mention that right under article 21 got disappeared for an individual charged under UAPA. Thus judicial scrutiny is reasonably permissible and not barred even under the concerned special law.

The Apex court judgment of Union of India v. KA Najeeb is a landmark in this regard as in this judgement the Court ruled that the existence of a statuary restrictions under section 43(D) (5) does not by itself encroach upon the constitutional jurisdiction of the Court to grant a bail, where there is instance of continuous deprivation of individuals liberty due to the prolonged incarceration without being any establish guilt against such individual been established.

The reasoning behind this ruling was that when there is no possibility or indication of trial been completed within a reasonable time and thecustody period become substantial, than individual liberty must not be disregarded merely due to statutory directives. Therefore it can be said that statutory restrictions on bail cannot be understood as a constitutional vacuum for putting an accused who's crime has not yet established behind the bar for the indefinite period.

3. The Way Foreword:

The denial of bail to Umar Khalid & Sharjeel Imam in January 2026 by our Hon’ble Supreme Court brought the judicial conflict into sharp focus. In this matter, the Apex Court is concerned with whether prolonged incarceration, in the absence of any indication of trial completion within a reasonable time, violates the constitutional safeguard protected under Article 21.

The Court has taken a partly confusing view by recognising the constitutional danger that prolonged incarceration poses on the one hand, and refusing to believe the indefinite passage of time in jail as the gateway for automatic release of individuals imprisoned for long periods behind the bar.

The Court is correct in articulating that the mathematical proposition that ‘X’ years in Jail will automatically become a ground for bail; however, at the same time, it is important to understand that problems arise when, due to the complexity of the case, it becomes impossible to conclude the trial within a reasonable time. Complexity cannot legalise the delay and ultimately infringe individual liberty; the prosecution, while arguing that the complexity of the case makes the accused a danger to the public at large, is completely hollow and carries no lawful backing.

Therefore, the way forward lies in balancing the interest of the prosecution with that of the individual's liberty. Parliament possesses the right to enact stringent provisions and make the process of bail difficult. But it cannot disregard the accused's right guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution. Moreover, constitutional courts in India should respect the statutory directives provided by the special laws but should not disregard the power they have to scrutinise the circumstances of the matter empowered by constitution and also not barred by the statutory words.