Delhi: While granting bail to Syed Iftikhar Andrabi, a government employee in the rural development department in Jammu & Kashmir, accused of narco terrorism—selling drugs to fund terrorism—and jailed for almost six years, the Supreme Court judgement in May 2026 noted the following:
- No cash or contraband had been recovered from him or his place of work
- The self-incriminating statements attributed to him were inadmissible under Indian law
- There was no past connection with terrorist activity or the narco trade
- He was a government employee and a supporter of a mainstream political party.
Even the dossier the police prepared to take him into preventive detention in August 2019 said he was a political activist associated with J&K’s People’s Conference (a Srinagar-based party that contests elections) and had close connections with others.
The CDR (call detail records) did not reveal any calls to, or connection with, terrorists. A certificate stating that he was an overground worker for terrorists was issued by the police a day before the chargesheet. No such allegation was made by the same superintendent of police in the earlier dossier.
The defence contended that two of the alleged terrorists whom the accused was said to have met in Pakistan in 2016-2017 could not have been met because they were two different people with the same names; one was deceased in 2000, and the other was a government employee in Kashmir.
All this was in addition to the fact that he was arrested on 11 June 2020 and jailed for five years and eleven months, 350 witnesses were still to be examined, and the conclusion of the trial in the near future was impossible.
“It is a complete set-up of a case,” senior advocate Shadan Farasat, who appeared for Andrabi, told us.
“This case typifies the real problem. When judges actually engage with the record rather than defer to the national security angle, the record very quickly collapses in most cases,” said Farasat. “The reason the prosecution gets away with it in many of these cases is that judges defer to national security and refuse to go into the record, which does not substantiate the allegations the prosecution is making.”
“Look at this, Kashmiri, Muslim, you have invoked UAPA, alleging cross-border terrorism. All the factors of a classic prejudice case in terms of identity and allegations,” said Farasat. “But the minute the court asks questions, the prosecution's case collapses. Yet you have such a long incarceration, even when the conviction rates are so low.”
Deviating From The Law
When the case of Syed Iftikhar Andrabi vs National Investigation Agency was reported in May 2026, the part that received the most attention was the two-judge bench’s crucial observations that if there is a prolonged delay in trial, with no reasonable expectation that it would be concluded in a reasonable time frame, then bail must be granted even in cases where grave crimes were alleged.
There was a statutory restriction on the granting of bail if the State made a prima facie case, as in the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, 1967, India’s anti-terrorism law.
Two judges, Justice B V Nagarathna and Justice Ujjal Bhuyan, reinforced the authority of Union of India vs KA Najeeb, which said that Article 21 of the Indian Constitution, the fundamental right to life and liberty, including the right to a speedy trial, prevailed over any statutory restriction to bail.
They questioned why a two-judge bench did not follow the three-judge bench of Najeeb and denied bail to political activists Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam in a Delhi riots case, in which they have served almost six years in pretrial detention.
The judges observed that the nationwide conviction rate under the UAPA hovered between 2% and 6% from 2019 to 2023.
A reading of the bail order also pointed to another trend that Article 14 has been tracking (here, here and here): slapping people with poorly evidenced or plainly concocted cases under the most stringent laws like the UAPA, in which trial courts and even constitutional courts hesitate to grant bail despite the Supreme Court having set precedent to do so.
So, the accused languish behind bars for years before many plead guilty to get out, obliterating the basic principle of presumed innocence until proven guilty.
A study we published on the use UAPA in Karnataka, one of few states with a comprehensive enough record of such cases over a sustained period of time, showed that of the 925 accused over two decades, between January 2005 and February 2025, 783 were Muslim, with nearly 8 in 10 accused during BJP’s 10.5 years in power, the number of acquitted (244) was five times higher than the 46 convicted, 80% of convictions came from guilty pleas, and charges in 37.33% cases were dropped before reaching trial.
This month, an NIA court in Chennai acquitted two Muslim men, finding the prosecution failed to produce evidence linking them to any terrorist activity.
In this poorly evidenced case registered against Andrabi under various sections of the UAPA and Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act (NDPS), 1985, bail was rejected by the special court of the National Investigation Agency (NIA), which acts as a trial court, and by the J&K High Court a year later in August 2025.
The Cycle Begins
The cycle of Andrabi’s incarceration started in August 2019 when he was slapped with preventive detention after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government abrogated J&K’s semi-autonomous status, demoting India’s only Muslim-majority state to a union territory under the direct control of the central government.
As the government braced for civil unrest, to the surprise move that stunned the people of J&K, and sent more troops into what is already one one of the most heavily militarised zones in the world, thousands of people were taken including three former chief ministers, former ministers and lawmakers, political workers, and people the government said were stone pelters, overground workers for terrorist groups and miscreants.
At the time, Andrabi was a village-level worker in the rural development department and a political activist with the People’s Conference. He challenged the preventive detention on 7 August 2019, and the case was heard seven months later on 12 March 2020.
Before an order was passed, the government revoked the detention on 25 April 2020, and he was released from custody.
The court order quashing the detention order was issued on 26 June 2020, more than three months after it was reserved and almost ten months after Andrabi was detained.
The order said the government had relied on “other incriminating material”, but nothing was mentioned as to what the material was.
Then, barely a month after revoking his preventive detention in April (and two weeks before the court order quashing the PSA), the police arrested him on 11 June 2020 in a case registered under the NDPS.
The NIA Takes Over
The FIR said Andrabi told the police he had taken heroin from one Abdul Momin, a driver of a car from which a large number of Rs 500 notes and six packets of narcotics were recovered on 11 June, and that he said he could recover the same.
The NIA took over the case, conducting raids at different locations in Handwara, a town in north Kashmir, and allegedly recovered 15 kgs of contraband and cash amounting to Rs 1.15 crores.
As per the NIA case, Andrabi was a close relative of Mohd Qasim Geelani and Mohd Yusuf Geelani, who are in Pakistan, commanders of the terrorist organisation Lashkar e Taiba (LeT).
The NIA filed a chargesheet on 5 December 2020, six months after the case was registered and Andrabi was arrested.
As per the chargesheet, information provided by Andrabi (accused number 2 in the case) led to the recovery of more than 35 lakh rupees and 3.2 kgs of heroin from the bedroom of accused number 1 (Abdul Momin and Andrabi’s son-in-law) as well as two mobile phones. He, his son and son-in-law were allegedly smuggling heroin.
The mobile phone allegedly established his link with Pakistan-based LeT/HM (Hizbul Mujahideen) operatives—“Wahid Geelani, Ajaz and others.”
The accused had allegedly visited Pakistan in 2016 and met the brother of Wahid Geelani.
Police witness (PW 33) “mentioned” the accused’s "involvement” in “drug racketeering and his association with LeT/HM operatives” in Pakistan.
Accused number 8, who had turned approver, has said the accused provided money to LeT.
He allegedly “used to supply drugs/heroin by using his car, and that he visited Pakistan in 2016 and 2017 via Wagah-Attari border”, and he worked as an “overground ground worker” for LeT and HM.
The accused’s 18- or 19-year-old daughter had Rs 90 lakh in 2018 in her bank account, but had no source of income, and she stated that her account was operated by her father and her brother (accused number 5).
“However, on query by the Bench, learned additional sessions judge submitted that the daughter of the appellant had not been made an accused in the case,” the two-judge bench noted in its bail judgment.
For these alleged crimes, Andrabi was accused under various sections of the NDPS and the UAPA, and conspiracy under the Indian Penal Code.
The Delay
Arguments on charges, in which the prosecution and defence argued for and against charging the accused with the crimes alleged in the chargesheet, concluded on 15 November 2021, almost a year after the chargesheet was filed on 5 December 2020, and a year and five months into pre-trial detention.
After a year and a half of detention, Andrabi was granted interim bail on medical grounds for three months from 4 Jan 2022 to 10 March 2022, following which he surrendered before the NIA court.
Charges were framed under NDPS and UAPA on 15 November 2023, two years after arguments on the charges had concluded and following three years and five months of pre-trial detention.
The NIA court rejected bail on 10 August 2024 after four years and two months of detention.
The NIA court, in orders dated 6-7 August 2025, said the prosecution’s failure to produce witnesses delayed the trial proceedings.
Bail was rejected by the J&K High Court on 19 August 2025, after five years and two months of detention.
The Supreme Court heard his bail plea in March 2026.
On the two-year delay in framing of charges after the arguments on charge concluded, Farasat, who appeared for Andrabi, told the Supreme Court that it was because the chief investigating officer did not appear despite repeated reminders of the NIA trial court.
The pronouncement of the order of charge was further delayed because the public prosecutor changed, and the new prosecutor filed an application to argue further even after the order was reserved.
Alleging behaviour prejudicial to a fair trial, the lawyer said the prosecution also suppressed all the statements by the protected witnesses recorded before a magistrate.
Inadmissible Statements
Farasat disputed the prosecution's claim that more than Rs 3 lakh and 3.2 kg of heroin were recovered based on Andrabi's disclosure statement. According to the advocate, the statement merely said: "I have taken narcotic substance (sic) from A1 (accused number 1), I can recover the same by pointing out (sic)."
He argued that the alleged recovery lacked supporting details, noting that neither the site map nor the seizure memo bore the signatures of independent witnesses or the accused.
Under section 25 of the Evidence Act, 1872, statements made to police are generally inadmissible unless (section 27) they lead to the discovery of material.
“The way the law works is that you have to say that the drugs are in X’s house on the first floor, in the cupboard on the left-hand side, and I will lead you to the drugs. Then, the officer takes you to the house, and the cupboard on the left-hand side is opened, and the drugs are found there,” Farasat told us.
“It has to be very specific, precise detail; only then does section 27 operate as an exception, and unless there is specificity, there is no credibility to it,” he said.
Farasat further argued that the alleged recovery, said to have been made on 11 June 2020, had already been shown as seized from accused number 1 in Bemina, Srinagar, and reported publicly on 10 June 2020.
Additional solicitor general S D Sanjay disputed this claim, alleging that Facebook posts cited by the defence had been manipulated and lacked credibility.
The advocate also pointed to bail orders granted to three co-accused. Accused number 3, arrested on what he described as an "identical disclosure", was granted bail by the J&K High Court on 18 February 2025. Accused numbers 12 and 13 were also granted bail, with the High Court noting an absence of material linking them to narcotics trafficking or corroborating allegations beyond statements and alleged telephone contacts.
When there is no evidence of sale, purchase or recovery of narcotics, the whole premise of selling narcotics to fund terrorism collapses, Farasat argued.
LeT Links Challenged
Farasat also challenged allegations linking Andrabi to Mohd Qasim Geelani and Mohd Yusuf Geelani, described by investigators as Pakistan-based LeT commanders.
According to the defence, the allegation rested solely on a police statement attributed to the accused and was unsupported by further investigation.
Farasat said Mohd Yusuf Geelani had died in 2000.
The additional solicitor general responded that the person who died on 4 September 2000 was Syed Md Yusuf Shah and that the surname "Geelani" appeared later in brackets on a death certificate issued in May 2021.
In its bail order, the Supreme Court noted: “However, on the pointed query by the Bench as to whether the date of the death was correct, Mr Sanjay submits that he is not aware of the same.”
The defence said Mohd Qasim Geelani was an assistant lineman in the Jal Shakti or water supply department in Handwara.
“I said two of my relatives who have those names are in India. One died in 2000, and the other is a government servant,” Farasat told us. “If it is the prosecution’s case that these are not those two people, they have to give an iota of detail, but there was zero, zilch.”
Farasat similarly challenged the alleged link to LeT/HM operative Wahid Geelani, arguing that it too was based solely on a statement to the police and unsupported by independent evidence.
He said call detail records from phones seized during the investigation showed no contact between the accused and any terrorist.
“Where is your independent verification that this number belongs to this person?” Farasat told us.
The Supreme Court's bail order records that when the prosecution relied on WhatsApp chats to argue that Andrabi was in touch with LeT operatives, the Bench asked to see the chats.
“Here also, when the Bench asked Mr Sanjay to show the chats, he was unable to do so,” the judges noted.
The Court further recorded that the J&K High Court, while denying bail, had observed that Andrabi's contention regarding the absence of terrorist links in the call records “may have some merit” and that nothing incriminating against him had emerged from the approver's deposition.
Farasat said Andrabi had travelled to Pakistan in 2016-17 to visit relatives, using valid documents and crossing through the Attari-Wagah border in both directions.
He also argued that one of the phone numbers cited by investigators was in fact a toll-free number belonging to Q Mobile, a telecommunications service provider in Karachi.
On the allegation that Andrabi was an overground worker for militants, the defence noted that the certificate describing him as such was issued by the superintendent of police, Handwara, on 4 December 2020, a day before the chargesheet was filed.
Farasat further pointed out that a preventive-detention dossier prepared by the same officer on 17 August 2019 made no mention of terrorist links and instead described Andrabi as a mainstream political worker of the People's Conference.
(Betwa Sharma is managing editor of Article 14.)
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