![\"\"](\"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/assests\/2025\/09\/indian-SC-court.jpg\")
New Delhi: A bench of the Indian Supreme Court on Monday appeared to doubt another apex court bench\u2019s judgment in the controversial order in which it denied bail to scholars and student activists Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam.<\/p>\nNew Delhi: A bench of the Indian Supreme Court on Monday appeared to doubt another apex court bench\u2019s judgment in the controversial order in which it denied bail to scholars and student activists Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam.<\/p>\n
According to Kashmir Media Service, the apex court opined that bail should be the rule and jail the exception even in Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) cases, and expressed serious reservations about its own earlier judgment.<\/p>\n
In January this year, a separate two-judge bench of the Supreme Court comprising Justices Aravind Kumar and NV Anjaria had denied bail to Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam on grounds of delay in trial proceedings.<\/p>\n
The court on Monday said the interpretation adopted in that judgment gave the impression that the KA Najeeb ruling was only a narrow exception to the stringent bail restrictions under Section 43D(5) of the UAPA.<\/p>\n
A bench of Justices BV Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan said an earlier judgment rejecting bail to Khalid and Imam appeared to dilute the binding precedent laid down by a larger bench in the landmark Union of India vs KA Najeeb case.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey cannot dilute, circumvent or disregard binding precedent,\u201d Justice Bhuyan said, pointing out that two judges who denied bail to Khalid ignored a binding three-judge bench judgment of the Supreme Court which said bail is a rule and jail an exception.
\n\u201cA judgment rendered by a bench of lesser strength is bound by the law declared by the bench of greater strength. Judicial discipline mandates that such a binding precedent must either be followed or, in case of doubt, be referred to a larger bench. A smaller bench cannot dilute, circumvent or disregard the ratio of a larger bench,\u201d Justice Bhuyan stated in the judgment.<\/p>\n
The bench observed that the pre-Najeeb judgment in NIA v. Zahoor Ahmed Shah Watali (2019)cannot be invoked to justify prolonged pre-trial incarceration under UAPA. Hence, the attempt made by Gurwinder Singh to read Watali as laying down a general rule of bail denial in UAPA cases is difficult to reconcile with.<\/p>\n
The top court specifically referred to the judgment in Gulfisha Fatima vs State, which had rejected bail pleas linked to the Delhi riots conspiracy case, and said it failed to properly follow the principles laid down in the KA Najeeb ruling.<\/p>\n
The judges cautioned that the constitutional right to speedy trial under Article 21 cannot be defeated merely because an accused has been charged under anti-terror laws.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New Delhi: A bench of the Indian Supreme Court on Monday appeared to doubt another apex court bench\u2019s judgment in the controversial order in which it denied bail to scholars and student activists Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam. According to Kashmir Media Service, the apex court opined that bail should be the rule and jail …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":183640,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-200936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-india"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/assests\/2025\/09\/indian-SC-court.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200936"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200936\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":200944,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200936\/revisions\/200944"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/183640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}