The Supreme Court granted bail to Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam in 2025 after years of detention under UAPA for the 2020 Delhi riots conspiracy case, while co-accused Gulfisha Fatima remains incarcerated. The divergence exposes the inconsistency in applying Section 43D(5) of UAPA, which sets an exceptionally high threshold for bail — courts must be satisfied that the accusation is prima facie not true before granting relief.

UAPA's bail provision under Section 43D(5) is the central legal issue here. Unlike ordinary bail governed by CrPC Section 437 or 439, UAPA imposes a reverse burden: bail cannot be granted if the court, on a perusal of the case diary or the report made under Section 173 CrPC, is of the opinion that there are reasonable grounds for believing the accusation against the accused is prima facie true.

This creates an almost insurmountable barrier for accused persons. The Supreme Court in NIA v. Zahoor Ahmad Shah Watali (2019) clarified that at the bail stage, courts must take the prosecution's case at face value without deep evaluation — making acquittal-style scrutiny unavailable. This effectively makes UAPA a near-automatic detention statute once chargesheet is filed.

The Khalid-Imam bail grants in 2025 signal a possible shift: courts may be willing to look at prolonged pre-trial detention as a factor that tips the scales, invoking Article 21 (right to life and personal liberty). The Supreme Court's earlier ruling in K.A. Najeeb (2021) established that constitutional courts retain the power to grant bail under UAPA when trial is unlikely to conclude within a reasonable time, overriding the statutory embargo.

Gulfisha's continued detention despite similar charges illustrates that the K.A. Najeeb principle is applied inconsistently — a critical tension CLAT examiners can exploit by asking aspirants to identify which principle applies, what its statutory basis is, and when Article 21 overrides a special statute.