12 years in jail, no end to trial in sight: Supreme Court grants bail to two UAPA accused

The Supreme Court has granted bail to two persons who had spent twelve years in jail awaiting the completion of their trial in a case filed under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) on allegations that they had links to the Indian Mujahideen [Mohd Saquib Ansari v. State of Delhi].

A Bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta flagged the slow pace of the trial and the prolonged incarceration of the accused as reasons justifying bail.

“We feel that 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 held.

The case arose from a First Information Report (FIR) registered in Delhi in November 2011. A Pakistani national arrested in connection with the case had allegedly disclosed the existence of a “Rajasthan Module” of the Indian Mujahideen, planning terror activities in and around Delhi.

Acting on this, explosives and bomb-making materials were recovered in 2014 from the premises of the two accused, Mohd Saquib Ansari and Waqar Azhar, in Jodhpur and Jaipur, respectively.

This led to two more FIRs in Rajasthan. Both men were arrested in all three cases in 2014 and have remained in custody since.

In one of the Rajasthan cases, both were convicted by the trial court in 2021. However, their sentences were later suspended by the Rajasthan High Court. They were also granted bail in the second Rajasthan case. Their continued incarceration thus rested solely on the Delhi case after the trial court and Delhi High Court rejected their bail pleas.

Before the Supreme Court, the accused argued that they had already spent nearly 12 years in custody and that the trial was nowhere near completion.

The Bench examined the status of the trial through the e-Courts portal. It found that the prosecution had cited 197 witnesses, but only 68 had been examined so far. It also noted that from January 2025 to date, only two witnesses had been examined, and one of them only partly.

The Court further noted that a co-accused had already been granted bail.

In these circumstances, it held that continuing to keep the petitioners in custody would violate their right to personal liberty.

“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,” the Court noted.

The Court accordingly directed that both accused be released on bail, subject to conditions imposed by the trial court. It clarified that its observations were confined to the bail proceedings and would not affect the merits of the trial.

[Read Order]