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A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by Sushant Singh, MK Venu, Sidharth Bhatia, Pratik Kanjilal, Tanweer Alam, Siddharth Varadarajan and Seema Chishti | Contributing writer: Kalrav Joshi, with additional inputs by Anirudh SK 

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Snapshot of the day

September 4, 2024

Siddharth Varadarajan

Former JNU student Sharjeel Imam was arrested in January 2020 and has been in jail ever since. That is four years and eight months without bail. He is charged with an amazing array of offences linked to the Delhi riots of February 2020 which broke out when he was already in jail on a sedition charge – for one harmless speech he made that month against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act. The Delhi Police has so far been unable to provide any evidence linking him to an act of violence. Yet, the Supreme Court’s stirring words about ‘bail is the norm, jail the exception’ do not seem to apply to him.

Imam’s latest attempt to invoke his constitutional rights hit a brick wall today when a