SC grants 10-day interim bail to UAPA undertrial after nearly six years in jail

The Supreme Court has granted a 10-day interim bail to a man who has spent nearly six years in custody as an undertrial under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, allowing him to attend to his ailing mother and his hearing-impaired child.

A Bench of Justices M.M. Sundresh and A.G. Masih, in an order passed on Wednesday, September 9, 2026, also weighed the length of his detention while his trial remained unfinished. The relief runs from Friday, September 11, to September 21, after which the petitioner must surrender.

Appearing for the petitioner, senior advocate Siddharth Dave and advocate Neha Rathi submitted that their client had already been in prison for five years and 11 months. Only 20 of the 50 prosecution witnesses have been examined so far, and with the majority still to be heard, there was no prospect of the trial concluding in the near future.

The petitioner, accused of radicalising "gullible Muslim youth", argued that there was no material linking him to any "terrorist act" under the UAPA. His appeal forms part of a group of matters challenging a January 2026 judgment of the Karnataka High Court.

The National Investigation Agency opposed the plea, contending that the child's disability was long-standing, that the mother did not need urgent medical treatment, and that a brother said to require medical attention did not live in the same household.

In its order, however, the court recorded that the child was to undergo bilateral cochlear implantation surgery and that the petitioner's brother might also need an eye operation. Along with the period already spent in custody, these factors persuaded the Bench to grant interim bail for 10 days.

Whether prolonged incarceration can dilute the strictness of bail provisions such as Section 43D(5) of the UAPA has long been a contested question of law. In its 2021 ruling in the K.A. Najeeb case, the Supreme Court held that constitutional courts may override statutory restrictions in anti-terror laws to release accused persons who have suffered lengthy detention with no end to their trial in sight. The judgment, authored by Justice Surya Kant, observed that courts cannot remain mute spectators before the power of Section 43D(5) and must intervene to protect the right to life and personal liberty under Article 21, since prolonged incarceration and inordinate delay in trial offend the right to a speedy trial and access to justice.

In May 2026, a Bench of Justices B.V. Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan reaffirmed the Najeeb principle in Syed Iftikhar Andrabi versus Union of India, while expressing serious reservations about another Bench's decision to deny bail to former JNU student leader Umar Khalid and co-accused Sharjeel Imam in the Delhi riots "larger conspiracy" case. The question of whether delay in trial and the resulting prolonged incarceration must necessarily lead to bail in UAPA cases has since been referred to a larger Bench for an authoritative ruling.