New Delhi: During court proceedings in March 2025, activist Gulfisha Fatima’s lawyer, Sarim Naved, responded to the most severe allegation the police had brought against her: several anonymous witnesses claimed said she had instructed people protesting against a controversial citizenship law in January and February 2020 to collect red chilli powder, glass bottles, acid bottles, sticks and stones and prepare to obstruct the roads. 

On 4 March, Naved told additional sessions judge Sameer Bajpai of the Karkardooma district court, “There is not one page on the record of such things being recovered or such things being used.” 

On 18 March, Naved said, “When they say red chilli powder and tehzab (acid), let them show one seizure memo, one panchnama (record of evidence). They have nothing like that. What do they have? Some protected witnesses.”

The hearings were for framing charges (the legal proceeding preceding the trial) in the so-called larger conspiracy case of the Delhi riots that investigates who was behind the communal violence, which resulted in the deaths of 53 in northeast Delhi in February 2020.

Even though the majority of those dead were Muslim and suffered more significant losses in property, this Delhi police case claims that the riots were organised and carried out by Muslims protesting the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), 2019, including Fatima, a Muslim woman from a lower-income area in northeast Delhi.

Plagued by the absence of medical, forensic and physical evidence, we have reported how the police have built this case, which includes grave charges such as engaging in a terrorist act, sedition, and murder, on inferences, assumptions, and countless anonymised witness statements, many of which were recorded months after the riots.

Despite the weak evidence and the Supreme Court's position that bail should be the norm and jail the exception, even if the individual is charged under India’s anti-terrorism legislation, the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, 1967, Fatima, who is now 32 years old, has spent five years in jail without bail or a trial.

Other activists and protesters against the CAA, including Umar Khalid, Khalid Saifi, Sharjeel Imam, and Meeran Haider have been incarcerated for approximately the same duration or even longer.

Following a district court's rejection of Fatima's bail in March 2022— a common occurrence in the lower courts when the police invoke the UAPA—she appealed to the Delhi High Court in May 2022.

Fatima's bail plea has been pending before the high court for nearly three years. 

It has been heard in full by two division benches, but no decision has been made since the senior judges in both benches—initially Justices Siddharth Mridul and Rajnish Bhatnagar, followed by Justices Suresh Kumar Kait and Manoj Jain—were transferred before they could give a ruling. 

A third bench comprising Justices Navin Chawla and Shalinder Kaur has been hearing it since December 2024, along with the bail pleas of at least eight of her co-accused.

16 April is the next hearing. 

This means that three benches of the Delhi High Court have been unable to find the time to decide on the bail of people who have been incarcerated for four to five years.

Fatima has spent more time in jail, with her bail pending in the city's constitutional court: three out of five years.

“Outrageous” is how lawyers in this case described this delay. 

Lawyers of the accused awaiting bail, whom we have interviewed over the past few months and years, said there is apathy towards the plight of the incarcerated and indifference to the collapse of the rule of law and due process. This is in addition to a slew of administrative delays—adjournments by judges occupied with many cases, judges on leave, and adjournments sought by the prosecution and defence lawyers.

Lawyers said that judges had not shown the urgency that such a long period of incarceration should elicit, partly because of the profile of the accused. The level of urgency would have been different if the accused were senior politicians. 

Of the 18 people chargesheeted in the case, 16 are Muslim. 

Six accused, including the two Hindu student activists who opposed the CAA, Devangana Kalita and Natasha Narwal, are out on bail. 

One of the main reasons for the delay before the high court was that the bail pleas of the remaining accused were clubbed together and heard in one batch.

Months pass as the lawyers for each accused make bail arguments. The time each lawyer takes varies, with some hiring senior counsel who are not always available. The prosecution responds to the arguments of each accused. 

By the time this exercise is complete, a bench that has remained together for four to five months is close to breaking up—often because the senior judge is transferred—and the matter is heard again.  

“It is really demoralising for the family of a person who has been waiting for this adjudication for such a long time,” said Harsh Bora, Fatima’s lawyer. “Litigants have hopes and expectations from courts about bail getting decided. It doesn’t reflect well on our system when this happens."

Hussain, Fatima’s 30-year-old brother, who requested that his first name not be published, said that their parents were “mentally disturbed” but they hoped and prayed for her release. 

“Everything is the same as the first day. Nothing has changed,” said Hussain. “There is pain. There is hope she will come back. We have no choice but to wait.” 

5 Years In Jail 

Fatima, an MBA from the Institute of Management Education in Ghaziabad, was arrested on 9 April 2020 in connection with FIR 48, known as the Jafrabad roadblock case.  

While US President Donald Trump was on a two-day visit to India, Muslim women from poor-income neighbourhoods gathered under the Jafrabad metro station to protest against the CAA and blocked the main road. The police filed a case of rioting against them. 

We reported how they were identified eight months to a year after the roadblock—a police informer would run into one or two of them every few weeks while walking around a place called Peeli Mithi ground. There was no explanation of how the informer recognised the burqa-clad women from months earlier. 

We determined they were booked solely to collect statements against Fatima and two of her co-accused, Devangana Kalita and Natasha Narwal. 

On 11 April, Fatima was arrested in FIR 59—the so-called larger conspiracy case.

Fatima received bail in FIR 48 in May 2020 but remained jailed in FIR 59.

The chargesheet in FIR 59 said that “Gulfisha played an essential role in spreading the recent Delhi riots by way of road blocks, hate speeches and instigating protestors to get violent, to any extent, against the other community as well as the paramilitary forces.”

Protest Vs Terrorism

While granting bail to three of Fatima’s co-accused in June 2021—Natasha Narwal, Devangana Kalita and Asif Iqbal Tanha— a division bench of  Justice Siddharth Mridul and Anup Jairam Bhambhani said no prima facie case of a terrorist act was made out. The police had blurred the lines between the right to protest and terrorism. And that organising roadblocks was not terrorism. 

Fatima was accused of organising the roadblock under the Jafrabad metro station, a protest site that remained peaceful during the riots. 

FIR 48 was only registered close to seven in the evening on 24 February, almost two days after the roadblock was started on the night of 22 February, and there was no mention of any violence. 

The police cleared the site on 25 February.

There was violence a kilometer away, close to the Maujpur metro station where the BJP leader Kapil Mishra—now minister of law and justice in the New Delhi government—gathered people and gave a speech widely regarded as incendiary.

The police did not register a case against him despite the speech and various complaints by eyewitnesses alleging grave crimes. 

They resisted registering a case against Mishra, accusing those who have moved the courts against him of having a hidden agenda and trying to frame him, and persisted with their predetermined narrative of blaming the predominantly Muslim anti-CAA protesters for the riots.

In March 2025, five years after the riots, in response to a complaint by one such eyewitness, additional chief judicial magistrate, Vaibhav Chaurasia, from the Rouse Avenue Courts in India’s capital city, ordered the police to register an FIR against Mishra. 

The police are widely expected to move the higher court for a stay.  

Growing The Case 

When FIR 59 was registered on 6 March 2020, the sections contained were rioting, rioting with a deadly weapon, unlawful assembly and conspiracy. 

As the police set about holding the anti-CAA protesters responsible for the riots and built a case that made it clear dissent would invite dire and life altering consequences,  the sections grew to include four sections of the UAPA, 25 sections under the Indian Penal Code, 1860, two sections of the Prevention of Damage of Public Property Act, 1984, and two sections of the Arms Act, 1959. 

Crippled by the lack of evidence, however, the police used hundreds of protected witness statements, the majority of which were recorded months following the riots.

There is no clarification as to why numerous individuals would withhold information about the preparation of a riot before the outbreak of violence or shortly thereafter, only to come forward to the police months later.

In certain instances, multiple statements from the same witness are documented, each adapting to align with the established story.

As per the police case, there were the people at the top who were planning the riots behind the cover of the anti-CAA protests, the intermediaries managing the protest locations and grassroots participants like Fatima who followed directives from the leaders and executed them.

However, there is scant evidence of Fatima receiving any instructions, including the method, location, time and source of this instruction. 

Last month, Fatima’s lawyer, Sarim Naved, told the district court that no actions attributed to Fatima justified the application of sections under the UAPA.

“Even taken at its maximum, the act of chakka jam, even if there were proof that the red chilli powder was used, that would not amount to terror,” said Naved.

“The element of criminality or mensrea has to be there,” he said. “The intention of protesting government policy or law with the intent democratically pushing them to withdraw the law does not come under this.”  

Half A Decade 

Hussain recalled that Fatima told her parents that she would continue her studies until they arranged her marriage, yet she also wanted to pursue her PhD.

Hussain said Fatima had always been cheerful and remained upbeat and optimistic about eventually getting out.

When they spoke on Eid in March, Hussain said they did not discuss their troubles. Instead, they talked about her time spent painting and teaching women and children in jail. 

“When she calls, we want her to feel happy, not tense or sad,” said Hussain. “She must feel pain because a cage is a cage, but she doesn’t show her pain.”

“She has adjusted a lot. She has learnt to live with it,” he said. “There is no point in being depressed. Hope keeps us alive.”

(Betwa Sharma is the managing editor of Article 14.)

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