Mainstream WeeklyHeinous crimes, as described in the Indian jurisprudence, are those offences for which the punishment under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) or any other Indian law for the time being in force, is imprisonment for seven years or more.
These crimes are described as crimes against humanity, such as murder, extermination, enslavement, torture, rape, and persecution. Other examples, or crimes with a similar severe nature, might include genocide, terrorism, and large-scale human trafficking, as these actions cause great suffering and injury.
On Tuesday [September 3, 2025 ], the Delhi High Court denied bail for the sixth time to JNU Ph.D scholar Umar Khalid, a brilliant academic, arrested by the Delhi Police in September 2020 for allegedly conspiring to cause the February 2020 communal riots in North-East Delhi. Nine other equally promising students and scholars, all Muslims, namely Meeran Haider, arrested April, 2020 whose bail plea was dismissed by the High Court four times; Tasleem Ahmed arrested June 2020, bail plea dismissed by the Delhi High Court three times; Athar Khan, arrested July 2020, bail plea dismissed twice; Khalid Saifi, arrested March 2020, bail plea dismissed twice; Gulfisha Fatima arrested April 2020, bail plea dismissed twice; Sharjeel Imam, arrested January 2020, bail plea dismissed twice; Shifa ur Reehman, arrested April 2020, bail plea dismissed twice and Saleem Khan, arrested June 2020, bail plea dismissed twice. Sharjeel Imam in his bail plea, mentioned that he was already in jail when the February-end riots took place.
These students and scholars of prestigious universities, JNU, Jamia Millia and Delhi University had sought bail on the ground that their crime, even if proven, does not amount to be heinous for which the law prescribes a sentence of seven years. Yet each one of them have been imprisoned without trial, for more than five years now for an incident that took place in North-East Delhi on February 24 and 25, while US President Donald Trump was visiting New Delhi.
Sure, they agitated and rallied others to join their peaceful protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CCA) of December 2019 which pointedly excluded Muslims, along with the Modi government’s decision of November 2019 to create a National Register of Citizens (NRC), ostensibly to get rid of foreigners living illegally in India. Union Home Minister Amit Shah, during the course of discussion on the NRC, spoke of getting rid of termites (subtly implying Muslims). This was the background in which students and Muslim women, and others, started holding street-level protest demonstrations and dharnas, never indulging in any violence or hate speeches. Instead, holding the national tricolour aloft and swearing by Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar, Shaheed Bhagat Singh, Maulana Azad and most of all Mahatma Gandhi, reminding this partisan government of their rights guaranteed by the Indian Constitution.
In most crimes of dacoity, murder, rape, enslavement or torture, the accused are let off after conviction in seven years. These peaceful, brilliant scholars cited that when the trial begins, the prosecution, according to their chargesheets, intends examining 900 witnesses with undisclosed