“This is a matter that may take one or two minutes,” a Supreme Court bench had remarked while adjourning a Delhi riots case on July 12. The “matter” in question was the bail plea of activist and former JNU scholar Umar Khalid — incarcerated since September 2020 under charges of the UAPA and criminal conspiracy in the Delhi riots case.
After a lapse of nearly two months and five adjournments, the top court has allowed Khalid a “last opportunity” for his bail plea hearing next week. Out of the seven times the plea was listed before the court, it was dropped from the cause list once, and adjourned five times for varied reasons: the court’s inability to hear the plea, a judge recusing himself, a delay in filing response by the Delhi Police and even Khalid’s own lawyer’s unavailability.
