Seven bail appeals from FIR 59 of 2020 — the Delhi Police case that the February 2020 riots were a planned conspiracy — decided after each appellant had spent more than five years in pre-trial custody. This page lays the judgment out in time. Every mark cites a paragraph.
One lane per appellant, from arrest to the Supreme Court's order — and, for the two refused, on into the renewal window the Court fixed. The top lane is the case itself: five charge-sheets, then two years to get documents supplied and arguments on charge started.
The Court's point about this picture: the length of the bars is real, but the trial-court order-sheets do not show the delay was the prosecution's alone (¶38–43).
Sharjeel Imam's lighter segment is custody in FIR 22/2020 before his formal arrest in this FIR on 25.08.2020 (¶113); the Court's own table dates his arrest 28.01.2020 (¶20). Interim-bail markers show the grant date only — the judgment does not give durations. Hover or tab to any mark for the paragraph.
Counted from the arrest date in the Court's table (¶20) to 5 January 2026. The Court's own phrasing for the site-level accused is "more than five years and six months" (¶248, ¶361); the arithmetic here is finer-grained than the Court needed to be. Length is not the outcome: the two refused sit at the top and the bottom of the chart.
Arithmetic is this page's, not the Court's. Umar Khalid's 01.10.2020 arrest date is as tabulated by the Court and has not been checked against the arrest memo.
Every dated act the judgment attributes to an appellant when it summarises the prosecution case, December 2019 to February 2020. The shape is the judgment's argument in §5: two names run through the planning months; the other five appear only where the sites were, mostly in the last week.
Undated allegations — fund-raising by Shifa-ur-Rehman (¶269) and Meeran Haider (¶347), the "twelve meetings" between December and February (¶375) — have no dot. Rows are ordered as the Court orders the roles: architects first, then coordinators, then site executors (¶107–110).
For each appellant: what the charge-sheet alleges, what the defence pressed, and what the Court did with it — each a one-line compression of the judgment's per-appellant chapter, with the paragraph range to read.
The parts that will be cited in the next UAPA bail matter.
Prolonged custody under UAPA calls for "heightened judicial scrutiny", resolved by weighing (i) the gravity and statutory character of the offence, (ii) the role attributed within the alleged design, (iii) the prima facie strength of the case at the s.43D(5) threshold, and (iv) whether incarceration has become "demonstrably disproportionate". ¶56
Union of India v. K.A. Najeeb protects against unconscionable detention; it does not make time alone decisive. Reading it that way would let a special statute be "neutralised by the mere passage of time". ¶32–33, ¶52, ¶61
Where delay becomes a constitutional concern the court can direct an expeditious trial, prioritise witnesses, review progress periodically and preserve liberty to renew — which is exactly what it did for the two refused. ¶50, ¶432
Section 15 is not confined to bombs and firearms. Disrupting essential supplies and threatening economic security are within the definition; s.18 reaches planning, coordination and mobilisation. ¶86–90
The charge-sheets describe "a vertical chain of command". Ideological articulation or protest coordination, without "a demonstrable and proximate nexus to acts of violence", cannot be equated with facilitating riots — and those alleged to have facilitated cannot be held as if they had conceived. Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam therefore "stand on a qualitatively different footing from the remaining accused". ¶107–110
Gulfisha Fatima's allegations are "substantially identical" to those against Natasha Narwal and Devangana Kalita, on bail since 2021; refusing her would be "hostile discrimination" under Article 14. Gender "cannot dictate the outcome" but is a legitimate proportionality factor once investigation is over. ¶420–425
Imposed on the five "not as matters of form, but as substantive safeguards" (¶434). Two of them silence the released until the trial ends.