Given the facts, the court said the “continued incarceration of the petitioners in this case is grossly violative of the right to liberty enshrined under Article 21 of the Constitution of India.” (Image generated using AI)The Supreme Court has granted bail to two men, charged under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), noting that they have remained in jail for nearly 12 years in connection with the case booked by the Special Cell of Delhi Police and that there is “no prospect of an early conclusion of the trial.”A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta also noted in its July 27 order that the life sentence imposed on Saquib Ansari and Waqar Azhar, following their conviction in another case under the anti-terror law in Jaipur in March 2021, had been suspended by the Rajasthan High Court and that they were granted bail in a third case in Jodhpur.The court said it “checked the status of the trial from the proceedings available on the e-Courts Services Portal. An application for bail preferred by co-accused Mohd Kafeel came to be rejected by the learned trial Court vide order dated 20th July, 2026, wherein it has been noticed that the examination of Prosecution Witness-68 was continuing out of the 197 prosecution witnesses proposed to be examined.”It added, “The proceedings further reveal that from January 2025 till date, only two witnesses have been examined, one of whom has been examined only in part. The progress of the trial has been extremely slow, and there appears to be no prospect of the trial being concluded in the near future.”Given the facts, the court said the “continued incarceration of the petitioners in this case is grossly violative of the right to liberty enshrined under Article 21 of the Constitution of India.”The court bench said that it had not commented on the merits of the case. It asked the accused duo to cooperate with the trial and said that in the event the trial Court or prosecution finds that they are delaying the conclusion of trial, failing to cooperate with the trial, or otherwise misusing the liberty granted to them, it shall be open to the prosecution to appraise it of the same for appropriate orders.The case has its origins in the arrest of Pakistani national Mohd Qateel Siddiqui by the Delhi Police Special Cell in November 2011. He allegedly disclosed the establishment of a Rajasthan Module of the Indian Mujahideen to carry out terrorist activities in and around Delhi and that its members were in possession of consignments of explosives. Subsequently, the premises of Ansari in Jodhpur were searched on March 23, 2014, during which gunpowder, ammonium nitrate, detonators and other articles allegedly used for the preparation of explosive devices were recovered and seized.