New Delhi, Sept. 14 -- On December 24, 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. "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." 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. "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. 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 for his alleged role in fomenting violence that killed 53 people during the riots in February 2020. Earlier this month, the Delhi high court denied bail to Khalid, fellow student leader Sharjeel Imam and nine others, ruling that it didn't matter if he was not present when violence broke out, said it couldn't be said that the evidence was weak, and held that he made speeches meant to instigate the Muslim community. But sections of civil society, activists and friends of Khalid point out that he has stayed behind bars for extended periods of time without a guilty verdict, that his bail applications saw deferments, adjournments or recusals in the Delhi high court, and the Supreme Court, and that the purported evidence has never shown any direct call to violence by him. P4...