More than 110 public intellectuals, activists, academics, filmmakers and citizens — including historian Ramachandra Guha, economist Jayati Ghosh, author Arundhati Roy, and Rajya Sabha MP Manoj Kumar Jha — have written an open letter to the Chief Justice of India, urging the court to grant bail to Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam, who have now spent six years as undertrial prisoners in the 2020 Delhi riots "larger conspiracy" case under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).The signatories also include actors Prakash Raj and Swara Bhasker, journalist Rana Ayyub, writer Meena Kandasamy, JNU professors Nivedita Menon and Ayesha Kidwai, and CPI(ML) Liberation MP Raja Ram Singh, among others from academia, cinema and civil society.The CJI's Own WordsThe letter argues that in a recent lecture in Sweden, the CJI cited the Supreme Court's 2021 three bench ruling in K.A. Najeeb case, to underline that constitutional courts retain the power to grant bail once prolonged incarceration itself begins to violate the right to a speedy trial under Article 21 — even under a stringent law like UAPA.The letter quotes the Najeeb judgment's core holding that the rigours of bail-restricting provisions "will melt down where there is no likelihood of trial being completed within a reasonable time and the period of incarceration already undergone has exceeded a substantial part of the prescribed sentence."From Umar Khalid Book Row to RSS Events, JNU’s Autonomy is Increasingly at RiskThe letter then draws a direct parallel: Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam have been in custody for six years without their trial even beginning, in a case where the prosecution has named close to 900 witnesses, more than three times the 276 witnesses in the Najeeb case, where the accused was released after roughly six years inside. Despite this, their bail pleas have repeatedly been turned down, including by a two-judge Supreme Court bench in January 2026 in Gulfisha Fatima v. State. However, the Syed Iftikhar Andrabi v. National Investigation Agency ruling was delivered on 18 May 2026 by Justices B.V. Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan. This found that the January bench had departed from binding precedent without following proper procedure. The letter cites the bench's own words: that judicial discipline required a two-judge bench faced with a conflicting three-judge precedent to refer the matter upward rather than depart from it, and that being bound by Najeeb, the bench would "say this and no more."That case has since been referred to a larger bench to examine the broader questions of liberty and national security at stake, but as the letter states, Khalid and Imam remain in jail in the interim.TISS Students' Anticipatory Bail Denied Over Umar Khalid, Sharjeel Imam SlogansThe Larger Argument The letter frames the case as a test of whether "bail is the rule, jail an exception" remains a working principle of Indian constitutional law or merely, in its words, a "lofty phrase." It warns that continued indifference to indefinite pre-trial detention risks emboldening the use of laws like the UAPA to silence dissent without the state ever having to prove its case in court, and argues that dissent itself is essential to a functioning democracy. The letter is signed by over 100 public figures, including senior journalists like Neha Dixit and Pamela Philipose, filmmakers Anand Patwardhan and Nakul Singh Sawhney, retired IAS officer Aditi Mehta, PUCL's Seema Azad, and dozens of independent researchers, academics, and citizens from across the country.TISS Students' Anticipatory Bail Denied Over Umar Khalid, Sharjeel Imam Slogans