New Delhi: Ab yahi zindagi hai (This is life now).

This was what jailed human rights activist Umar Khalid had to say to his friend Banojyotsna Lahiri over the phone from Tihar after the Supreme Court denied his bail plea.

Lahiri posted on X the conversation they had during the monitored, five-minute call. She told Umar that five co-accused had received bail while he and Sharjeel Imam, another former student activist, had not.

She wrote: “’I am really happy for the others, who got bail! So relieved’, Umar said. ‘I’ll come tomorrow for Mulaqat (scheduled meeting with a prisoner),’ I replied. ‘Good good, aa jana. Ab yahi zindagi hai.’”

Umar’s father S.Q.R. Ilyas was visibly downcast as he walked out of the Supreme Court, declining TV cameras a sound bite.

Sharjeel, too, had a phone conversation with his brother Muzammil after the verdict.

“He (Sharjeel) said, ‘Chalo ek aur saal wait karte hain (OK, let’s wait one more year).’ He is strong like that, but I know he feels the pain deep inside after six years in jail,” Muzammil told The Telegraph.

“We will have to wait for around a year, until the prosecution witnesses are examined, before we can approach the lower court for bail….

“We were ready for anything today but I can’t understand how this can be a conspiracy by a group of people if bail has been granted to all but two of them. The question then is, who did they commit this so-called conspiracy with?”

Umar has been in jail since September 13, 2020, and Sharjeel since January 28, 2020 — almost a month before the late-February communal riots in Delhi that year, which they are accused of instigating through protests against the new citizenship regime.

Shakra Begum, mother of Gulfisha Fatima — the lone woman to face prolonged imprisonment in the case — struggled to find words after the court granted bail to her daughter, arrested on April 9, 2020.

Gulfisha’s mother said: “I have not spoken to the lawyers yet. I just know that the court has allowed her to come back home. I don’t know when they will release her.”

RJD parliamentarian Manoj Jha has attended bail hearings — one of the few senior politicians to do so — of Meeran Haider, who headed the party’s youth wing in Delhi when he was arrested. Haider too was granted bail.

Jha told this newspaper: “Constitutional courts have the power and indeed the duty to grant bail where incarceration becomes unduly long, unjustified, or disproportionate. Yet, in the case of Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam, the prevailing judicial view seems to be that the time already spent in jail is still not long enough, and that the delay in trial is not yet shocking or unconstitutional.

“This raises troubling questions about how much incarceration must be endured before constitutional protections are activated and achieved. However, I welcome the grant of bail to the other five.”

Kapil Mishra, Delhi government minister and Delhi BJP vice-president, told reporters: “The SC verdict underscores that the Delhi riots were a premeditated conspiracy, and some political parties were behind it.”

Mishra’s provocative speech before the riots had come under Delhi High Court’s glare but the police did not find it illegal.

In a post on X, Congress MP Sasikanth Senthil said: “Shocking. Have no words to describe this verdict. Is Justice still a virtue in this country?”

CPM parliamentarian John Brittas tweeted: “The principle that ‘bail is the rule, jail the exception’ clearly doesn’t apply when it comes to certain individuals.

“Meanwhile, convicted rapist and murderer Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh (sentenced in 2017) has just been granted yet another 40-day parole — his 15th temporary release from prison since conviction. One languishes indefinitely without trial. The other enjoys repeated ‘jail vacations’ on demand.”

Former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti too drew a parallel between Ram Rahim and Umar.

“What a travesty of justice…. The scales of justice are breaking under the burden of injustice,” she posted on X.

Pro-BJP handles on social media slammed politicians of the Opposition Democratic Party of the US, including New York mayor Zohran Mamdani, for speaking out in solidarity with Umar and others before the verdict.