“Every day Gulfisha remains imprisoned, every day dissenting voices are locked away, democracy itself is strangled,” read a statement posted on the Instagram account Free Gulfisha on Wednesday, a day after the Muslim woman activist was denied bail by the Delhi High Court on the day she completed 1,978 days in prison under the draconian UAPA in the Northeast Delhi pogrom conspiracy case.
Gulfisha is one among the ten anti-CAA activists whose bail pleas were dismissed on Tuesday by the Delhi High Court.
The rejection came as family members, rights groups, and many others had hoped for their release, insisting that the case against them is fabricated.
“After more than five long and endless years of waiting, the Delhi High Court bench of Justices Navin Chawla and Shalinder Kaur has pronounced its verdict on Gulfisha’s bail application and the applications of all other equal citizenship activists. In a single chilling line, Justice Kaur declared: ‘All petitions are dismissed’,” read the statement by the Free Gulfisha campaign, an online collective demanding her release.
The statement continued: “Once again, the judiciary has completely abdicated its responsibility. Bench after bench, judge after judge, not one has found the courage to acknowledge the obvious: that this case is an utter fabrication, a cruel spectacle, a weapon wielded to crush dissent. The grounds for Gulfisha’s bail could not have been stronger – five years behind bars without trial, the principle of parity firmly established. Yet apparently the law no longer matters. What prevails is the will of the government, and the judiciary bows to it. The government has decreed that young Muslim voices, especially women like Gulfisha who dared to speak, must be broken and caged; made into an example so that no one else dares again. And the judiciary is nothing less than complicit, inflicting punishment in the name of the law.”
“Yesterday, with this verdict, it has been pronounced dead. Gulfisha was arrested on 1st May 2020 and filed for bail in May 2022. It took the High Court three benches and three rounds of hearings and three years of cruel delays, only to deliver yesterday’s cowardly rejection,” the statement added.
Gulfisha, a Delhi University graduate, was imprisoned in her early to mid-20s. She has now turned 31.
For her family, the wait for her return feels endless, though they continue to cling to hope that justice will eventually prevail. “Don’t we all have a duty to stand up against the wrongdoing? She is a brave girl. We are proud of her,” her father, Tasneef Hussain, told Maktoob two years ago.
“Our love, strength, and solidarity go to Gulfisha as she receives this devastating news in her prison cell, and to all the others who continue to languish behind bars. Our hearts go out to her Ammi, Abbu, and her family, who have tried so desperately to hold on to a thread of hope, and who were ready to finally welcome her back home. There is no comfort we can offer them today. Because there is no justice,” the statement concluded with the words “Sab Yaad Rakha Jayega” (“We will remember it all”), from a popular anti-CAA poem by Aamir Aziz.
The other anti-CAA activists denied bail by the Delhi High Court are Sharjeel Imam, Umar Khalid, Athar Khan, Khalid Saifi, Mohd Saleem Khan, Shifa-ur-Rehman, Meeran Haider, Tasleem Ahmed, and Shadab Ahmed. All have been languishing in jail since 2020 under the UAPA in connection with the Delhi pogrom “larger conspiracy” case.
The arrested activists, their families, rights groups, and opposition leaders continue to say that these young men and women remain imprisoned only because they dared to participate in the historic protests against the discriminatory Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in 2020.
