BETWA SHARMA
“He does not have FOMO,” Ahmad Ibrahim, a 32-year-old lawyer, said about Sharjeel Imam, a PhD scholar jailed in January 2020 for his speeches during the movement to protest India's controversial citizenship law.
His reply came in response to my question about whether Imam was “bothered” by the fact that he had never got quite as much attention from the media and public as some of the other students and activists accused of using the movement to plan riots in February 2020 in northeast Delhi.
I said “bothered” was also not the right word, and as I paused to find one, Ahmad volunteered “FOMO”—internet slang for the “fear of missing out”—and chuckled.
Even within the motley crew that make up the accused in the so-called “larger conspiracy case”—students, activists, politicians and poor Muslims—a few have commanded the lion’s share of the liberal attention, curiosity and sympathy.
Imam’s harsh, aggressive, and somewhat polarising speeches during the protests did not endear him to everyone, and he didn’t seem to care.
The most infamous of the four he gave was at the Aligarh Muslim University, where he called for Muslims to block the road and cut off India’s mainland from the northeast.
“If we have five lakh organised people, then we can permanently cut Hindustan and the northeast,” Imam said. “If not permanently, then for at least one to two months. It is our responsibility to cut Assam and India. Then, they will listen to us.”
While some activists wanted to characterise the movement as a secular one, with everyone who opposed the government having a stake, Imam posited it as one driven by and for Muslims.
These speeches were also a distraction from looking at the actual evidence tying him to the riots.
When we did—ahead of the five years of his incarceration on 28 January 2025—we found the case against him followed a well-established pattern of inferences and conjectures meant to pin the riots on the anti-CAA protests.
In Imam’s case, the link was even more tenuous because he was arrested as early as 28 January 2020, a month before the riots broke out and two weeks before US President Donald Trump’s visit to India was made public.
This is important because the police case is that the riots were timed to coincide with Trump’s visit to India. Imam has distanced himself from the other activists, protesting in his own way and on his own terms in the weeks before his arrest. His lawyers have pointed out that the police have not been able to show communication or chats between him and the others.
That is perhaps why the prosecution reads out his speeches every time his bail plea is heard. As Ibrahim put it, the speeches “will prejudice any judge”.
When we looked up some landmark cases on the freedom of speech and expression, the Supreme Court has said that speech, even “strongly worded” criticism of the government, is protected under the right to freedom of speech and expression enshrined in the Constitution as long as there is no call for violence. They have allowed for slogans like “Khalistan zindabad”, “raj karega khalsa”, and “Hinduan nun Punjab chon kadh ke chhadange hun mauka aya hai raj kayam karan da” (we will drive Hindus out of Punjab and establish our rule).
The court has linked “public order” to the security and defence of the state, not merely a law-and-order problem, and the violence caused should be directly related to speech or expression.
Imam’s lawyers have pointed out that while he may have called for “chakka jams” or blocking of roads, he also called for non-violence.
While granting bail to three of his co-accused in June 2021, two judges of the Delhi High Court said the police could not build a case on “superfluous verbiage, hyperbole and stretched inferences”. They had blurred the lines between terrorist activity and dissent, and even if what the police said was true, activities such as making inflammatory speeches and chakka jams were not terrorist activity.
Inexplicably, a year later, one of the same judges denied bail to Umar Khalid, a political activist, who became a popular symbol of resistance for many Muslims and a thorn in the side of the government. It was the same case and the same facts and circumstances.
In a travesty of natural justice, the right to life and liberty, and Supreme Court orders for all courts to hear bail matters quickly, Imam’s plea has been pending before the Delhi High Court for 2.9 years.
While they may not have been easy to listen to, the anger and frustration at the heart of Imam’s speeches resonated with many Muslims who have been feeling extremely vulnerable and persecuted since the BJP came to power in 2014.
When we asked his lawyer whether Imam regretted making them, Ibrahim said they had decided to defend the speeches in every bail hearing and would do so during the trial.
As for the lack of attention from the media, Ibrahim said media attention was always a double-edged sword.
“I don’t think this has ever been an issue for him. He has never cared about what people are saying about him,” said Ibrahim. “He likes to keep to himself.”
Read Betwa Sharma’s full story here.
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