Guilty or innocent? Wait continues for Sharjeel trial

It is January 2020. Anti-CAA protests have gathered steam and a massive sit-in blocking a road in Shaheen Bagh in southeast Delhi is attracting global attention. Northern India is in foment as agitations are cropping up across Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal. The same student, a part of a WhatsApp group called Muslim Students of JNU (MSJ), travels to Aligarh Muslim University, and delivers a speech similar in tone to his Jamia comments, this time allegedly calling for a blockade of the strategic chicken’s neck that connects mainland India to the Northeast. He is arrested two weeks later after a political storm over his remarks and the shadow of violence looming over Delhi. The Capital’s worst riots in three decades would break out a month later.

It is now January 2025. The student, Sharjeel Imam, is now 36. He is a polarising figure. To the police, government, and large sections of the populace, he is a dangerous instigator who corralled Muslim protesters to destabilise the State. They argue that his speeches were provocative and directly caused the violence in Jamia, the Shaheen Bagh protests, and the Delhi riots that killed 53 people. In a 17,000 page charge sheet, police have alleged that his speech was a call to hurt the country’s territorial sovereignty and cut off the Northeast, and that he was in cahoots with anti-India forces and his mentor, JNU student Umar Khalid, to whip up religious extremism. He faces First Information Reports in five states under the now-repealed sedition law, several sections of the Indian Penal Code, and the stringent Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.

But to many activists, civil society organisations, and sections of society, Imam is a victim of prosecutorial overreach, someone whose speeches were shorn of any direct call to violence but who was arrested based on edited video clips. They argue that his prolonged incarceration is a symbol of the excesses of pre-trial detention, unbecoming of a modern, tolerant democracy.

It has been five years but this debate – in one of India’s most high-profile trials – is far from being settled. On January 28, he will have spent five years in jail -- with his trial nowhere in sight.

2

To his friends, family and colleagues, Imam is a brilliant scholar with a distinctive arc. Born in Kako village in Bihar’s Jehanabad district, Imam was the son of former Janata Dal (United) politician Akbar Imam. He joined the computer science stream of IIT-Bombay in 2006, graduating five years later with an integrated masters degree. In 2011, he moved to Bengaluru with a job as a developer in a private software firm. Two years later, he entered JNU, first to pursue a masters and then a doctoral degree, in modern history.

From his early years, Imam was politically conscious and acutely aware of the condition of Muslim students, say his friends. Vaibhav Sorte remembered his senior – called Mam in the hostel – as quiet and sincere. “He was political, I mean we all were…He was one of the few students who took an interest outside engineering,” he said. As the only Muslim student in his class and one of a handful in the hostel, Imam was troubled by the many stereotypes and rumours about Muslims that even his classmates believed in, said another friend, requesting anonymity. Once, he was bombarded with offensive questions about being a Muslim during a hostel event, the person quoted above said. And another time, there was a month-long attempt to “convert” him by some students peddling tropes about Muslims, Imam wrote in a 2017 article. “I don’t think his experience in Bengaluru was much better. Maybe this is why he wanted to go to JNU,” said the friend.

By some accounts, his time at JNU was similar. He became a member of the All India Students Association, the student wing of the Communist Party of India (Marxist Leninist), but quickly turned away from Left groups after the disappearance of Najeeb Ahmad in 2016. “The Muslims are regularly painted as uniquely misogynistic by many comrades...Islamophobia is rampant inside this ‘progressive’ campus as well,” he wrote in an article. During this time, he also collaborated with the Rekhta Foundation.

Ahmad, a 27-year-old biotechnology student, disappeared from JNU on October 15, 2016, after a fight the night before. Despite extensive police investigation, court orders and activist focus, he was never found. The Central Bureau of Investigation closed the case in 2018

His university friends remember Imam a bookish man focussed on his PhD looking into cow slaughter and communal riots in early 20th century India. “I remember him walking through the corridors with books in his hands…He was always welcoming and helpful. He was quiet and would sometimes keep to himself…especially after his father’s death in 2015,” said Adarsh Kumar, a JNU student.

3

Take a look at the Delhi Police charge sheet, and the silhouette of a mild-mannered student melts away, replaced instead by an intrepid organiser working to trigger instability across the country. The first FIR, lodged by the crime branch of Delhi Police on January 25, 2020, booked Imam under sedition, promoting enmity, and spreading rumours. The UAPA was later added.

“Sharjeel was accused of delivering seditious speeches and inciting a particular section of the community to indulge in unlawful activities, detrimental to sovereignty and integrity of the nation. In the garb of protesting against CAA, he exhorted people of a particular community to block the highways leading to the major cities and resort to “chakka jam”, thereby disrupting normal life,” said a senior Delhi Police officer, requesting anonymity.

“He also openly defied the Constitution…In the name of opposing CAA, he propagated blocking the ‘chicken neck’...He also showed utter contempt and disregard for the democratic means of protest,” this officer added.

In another FIR, police named MSJ as a top conspirator for the Delhi riots, and alleged Imam and others of stone pelting outside Jamia on December 15, 2019.”The conspirators gave a call for marches and led a mob and instigated their communal feelings which led to a violent riot,” the charge sheet said.

The charge sheet appended Facebook posts, pages and chat transcripts from the MSJ group.

“Local residents of Shaheen Bagh were initially against the protest but Sharjeel threatened them with dire consequences if they did not yield to his demand and posed any obstruction to his roadblock plan…” said the charge sheet.

Police allege an intricate plan to foment violence. It said Imam went to Khureji in outer Delhi on January 15, 2020, to allegedly mobilise crowds and distribute provocative pamphlets. The next day, he delivered a speech at AMU. Six days later, he went to Asansol in West Bengal, allegedly to mobilise Muslims with a speech “aimed at disturbing the unity, integrity, security and sovereignty of India”.

Police allege Khalid, another undertrial in the Delhi riots case who served more than four years in jail, was his mentor. “For the deeply communal Umar Khalid, Sharjeel was the unapologetic floating froth of religious extremism who was to be used for executing the precipitation of the conspiracy,” the charge sheet said.

In courts, the Delhi Police argued that Imam and others disrupted essential supplies and services in Shaheen Bagh and instigated others to adopt his model of disruptive protests. “Sharjeel Imam also conspired with other conspirators to threaten the unity, integrity and sovereignty of India through ideas and speeches which he delivered from 13-12-2019 and continued till on 23-01-2020,” the charge sheet said.

4

Imam’s lawyers and family contest these charges. They argued in court that there was very little incontrovertible evidence in the charge sheet except screenshots of chats taken out of context and small edited clips of his speeches. For some charges, such as the connection to Khalid and the link to the larger Delhi riots conspiracy, they allege, no proof was given.

“There are eight cases against bhai [brother] for the speeches he gave. I am sure not one person has heard those speeches. They have only picked up 30-40-second clips and made him a villain. He never asked for any violence,” said his younger brother Muzammil.

Other than the Facebook posts, WhatsApp chats and speeches, the only proof attached are statements of protected witnesses – identified as Romeo, James, Bond, and one of Sharjeel’s acquaintances.

Imam’s family pointed to his speeches such as one made in Bihar on January 23, 2020 and quoted in the charge sheet, where he said protesters “don’t have to pick up stones, lathis and don’t have to fire any bullets”, and should “block roads and highways” instead.

“We agree that we all organised the Shaheen Bagh protest but that’s that. All my brother wanted was a protest. How can police link him to riots and arrest him before the riots even happened?” said Muzammil.

His lawyers point out that in a majority of cases, either the police haven’t filed a charge sheet, or Imam has made bail. In the main Delhi Police FIR, Imam was granted bail last year by the Delhi high court because he already served more than half of the maximum sentence allowed under the sections he was charged with. In a second FIR in Assam and a third FIR in Manipur in January 2020, no charge sheets have been filed. In a fourth FIR in Aligarh, a fifth in Arunachal Pradesh and a sixth in Delhi, Imam made bail. In a seventh case in Delhi, trial hasn’t begun and he was granted bail. And in an eighth, filed in March 2020 linking Imam to the riots two months after he was arrested, he remains in custody.

“The entire arguments have been done at least thrice in the high court and seven different benches have been on the case. The bail application in which he is in custody was filed in 2022, and is still pending,” said Ahmad Ibrahim, Imam’s lawyer. “70 hearings have taken place in the last 3 years. There is an extraordinary delay in justice...Police have no evidence and he has already got bail for his speeches because the courts observed that they didn’t instigate violence” he added.

In 2022, his bail appeal was adjourned four times due to government counsels asking for more time, and another 18 times, the bench did not assemble or the matter was renotified. Four times, the bench asked the matter be listed along with Khalid’s bail hearing. In 2023, the appeal was adjourned around seven times and renotified another 10 times. In 2024, the matter was renotified 7-8 times and listed for future dates four times.

Last week, the HC pulled up the Delhi Police by saying they couldn’t “endlessly” hear submissions in bail hearings. “This has to end. This can’t go on like this. This needs to end now. We can’t give you endless time” said the two-judge bench of justices Navin Chawla and Shalinder Kaur.

5

In Jehanabad’s Kako, Imam’s family is slowly losing the battle with hope. They have sent over 200 books to prison in the last five years, including those of Physics, Mathematics, languages and history. They were distressed when they read of his allegations in 2022 alleging harassment and assault by Tihar Jail officials but heartened to read his account published in 2024 through his lawyers. “There is nothing extraordinary about my daily routine. Most of the day is spent in my cell reading books and newspapers. In the evenings, I take an hour-long walk around my block,” Imam wrote.

Through a maze of mulaqats (the term used in prisons for meetings) in jail and phone conversations, they reminisce about his last day with them – Jan 28, 2020. “He was at our uncle’s house and was to leave for court to surrender. He called me and told me to rush our mother to our uncle’s house. He wanted to see her before getting arrested.He didn’t say much…He told me to take care of our mother and asked me to give the police all devices and pamphlets and cooperate with the probe,” said Muzammil.

Their mother, Afshan Rahim, is ailing. She doesn’t leave the house, meet relatives or attend events, because she can’t bear to be a part of any celebration. She remembers how her last words to her elder son as he climbed into the police car were – Jao Tumhe Allah Ke Hawale Kiya (you’re now in the hands of god). She reads every article about Imam, and has now learnt to use Facebook and Instagram to follow every update on the case.

“It’s been five years. I keep shuttling between Delhi and Jehanabad hoping for something but nothing has happened,”said Muzammil.

The family is close to losing hope. “He’s very strong…maybe we are not.”