Bail After Five Years: What the Hany Babu Order Says About Undertrials and UAPA

For former Delhi University professor and linguist Hany Babu, December 4, 2025 marked the first real crack in a prison routine that has lasted more than five years.

- TDG NETWORK

TDG NETWORK NEW DELHI For former Delhi University professor and linguist Hany Babu, December 4, 2025 marked the first real crack in a prison routine that has lasted more than five years. Arrested in 2020 in connection with the Elgar Parishad-Bhima Koregaon case and charged under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), he had repeatedly been denied bail.

The Bombay High Court has now granted him bail, not by declaring him innocent, but by acknowledging that pre-trial jail, when stretched for years with no end in sight, starts turning into punishment in itself.

WHAT THE BOMBAY HIGH COURT SAID

A division bench of Justices A.S. Gadkari and Sharmila Deshmukh focused on Babu's prolonged incarceration and the slow pace of trial in the sprawling UAPA case arising out of the 2018 Elgar Parishad event in Pune and subsequent caste violence at Bhima Koregaon.

ORDER INCLUDE: Babu has spent over five years in custody while the trial, involv ing voluminous electronic evidence and numerous witnesses, has barely begun.