5 years on, Umar awaits bail, trial

2022, Sahiba Khanam was woken up by the trill of her mobile phone at 7am. On the other side of the line was her son Umar Khalid, minutes after he was released from Delhi's Tihar Jail for the first time in two years.

- Hemani Bhandari

“He just said salaam. I jumped out of bed and told everyone he'd be home in 30 minutes,” Khanam said.

Khalid, a student leader who was arrested in connection with the 2020 Delhi riots, had been granted interim bail for seven days by the Delhi high court for his sister Zainab Fatima’s wedding.

“The moment he walked through the door, almost everyone was in tears,” his mother recalled. “I remember feeding him with my hands.”

His five sisters - from the US, UK, and Dubai - flew in to Delhi to see him. In the melee of friends, family and well-wishers, Khalid didn’t sleep for the first 36 hours. “I forced him to rest,” said Khanam, who runs a boutique in the Johri Farms neighbourhood.

‘Almost two years later, Khanam’s phone rang again on December 28, 2024. Khalid was about to be released again, for another week, for the wedding of a cousin. His sister Kulsum Fatima cut short a vaca~ tion to bring her children to meet Khalid.

“This time, we had a bit more time together since the wedding wasn't at our own home. When he arrived, he said he would eat meat every day because he didn't get it in jail, but two days later, he was back to daal-chawal,” Khanam laughed.

Eventually, on January 3, he went back to Tihar. He has remained there since. “When I went to drop him back at the jail, he said he felt the same pain he used to feel when I dropped him to nursery school,” Khanam said.

Khalid is charged under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, as well as for criminal conspiracy, sedition, rioting, and attempted murder under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) for his alleged role in fomenting violence that killed 53 people during the riots in February 2020.