Even in cases which have no national security implications, like the arrest of comedian Munnawar Faruqui, courts have often plainly ignored the law and denied bail. This is not to absolve lawyers and governments of their own independent responsibility to be bound by the law, but one can easily see how they might pass the buck. In matters relating to bail, which always require the exercise of discretion, governments lawyers and judges ultimately take their cues from what society might consider reasonable. This is where, we as a people, must turn our gaze inward to reflect on what kind of society is being created in our name. The provisions in the UAPA under which bail is net to impossible have been on the statute book since 2008. They joined a long list of similar provisions in anti-terror acts, both central and state, chipping away at the presumption of innocence and the fundamental rights of free speech and assembly. Barring some exceptions, judges have routinely upheld the legal validity of these draconian laws. Each of these laws and judgments are reflections of the paranold society we have become over time. Denial of bail is greeted either with widespread indifference or quite often with a platitude that good students should never have been out on the streets, they were asking for it. The Delhi HC judgment is an invitation for us to find our higher selves for lawyers to give advice without fear or favour, for policement to follow the rulebook, for governemnts to disagree with its dissidents without imprisoning them, and for citizens to not remain indifferent to injustice meted out to others. It is only then that the opinion of the Delhi HC judges that foundations of our nation stand on surer footing than to be likely to be shaken by a protest will ring truer than it seems to today.
