"Bail is the rule. Jail is the exception." Supreme Court of India, 18 May 2026. A two-judge bench granted bail to a man held nearly six years under UAPA with 350 prosecution witnesses still unexamined. The bench held the constitutional provision above the statutory one. It then criticised its own institution's prior departure from the same principle. The Bureau commends the bench. The Bureau commends it specifically for the second act.
The Bureau does not commend easily. The Bureau has been filing notes for some time now. The Bureau commends when it observes an institution doing what it exists to do, at a cost, against the grain of the prevailing drift, on the record.
On 18 May 2026, a bench of Justices B.V. Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan of the Supreme Court of India granted bail to Syed Iftikhar Andrabi — a Kashmiri man held since 2020 in an NIA narco-terror case under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. At the time of the hearing: nearly six years in custody. Prosecution witnesses remaining unexamined: over 350. Recovery from his person or premises: none. The case: still in its examination-of-witnesses stage, with no foreseeable trial conclusion.
The bench held that Section 43D(5) of the UAPA — the provision that creates a higher threshold for bail in cases involving terror-related charges — "cannot justify indefinite incarceration and must operate subject to Articles 21 and 22" of the Constitution of India. Article 21: the right to life and personal liberty. Article 22: protection against arbitrary detention. The constitutional provision was held above the statutory one. This is what courts exist to do.
The act the Bureau commends
- 01 The bench held the principle. UAPA has functioned in practice as an instrument of prolonged pre-trial detention: the statutory bail threshold is high, the NIA's case timelines are slow, and the result — documented in multiple cases before this one — is that the trial becomes the punishment. The Andrabi bench ruled that this is constitutionally impermissible. Personal liberty under Article 21 is not suspended by an investigation that has not produced a trial in six years. The Bureau records this as the correct ruling.
- 02 The bench then criticised its own institution. This is the act the Bureau specifically commends. The judgment explicitly noted that the Supreme Court's own January 2026 ruling — which denied bail to a separate UAPA detainee — had departed from the "bail is rule, jail is exception" principle without expressly overruling the prior larger bench that established it. The bench stated that a smaller bench cannot hollow out a larger bench's ruling without explicitly disagreeing with it. An institution that corrects its own prior departure from principle, on the record, in a published judgment, is doing something that institutions rarely do and are rarely rewarded for doing. The Bureau records this correction as the defining act of the commendation.
- 03 The principle, stated plainly. "Bail is the rule. Jail is the exception." This is not a new principle in Indian constitutional law. It is an old principle that has been narrowed, qualified, and effectively suspended in practice for UAPA detainees over the past decade. The bench re-stated it without qualification, applied it to a six-year detention, and grounded it in the fundamental rights chapter of the Constitution. The Bureau commends the plainness.
The Bureau commends Justices B.V. Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan for the ruling in Syed Iftikhar Andrabi v. NIA, 2026 INSC 503, dated 18 May 2026. The commendation is for two acts simultaneously: holding a man's Article 21 rights above a statutory detention threshold, and correcting the Court's own January 2026 departure from that principle in a prior case. The Bureau notes that the second act is harder than the first. The Bureau notes that it was done anyway.
The Bureau does not suggest the judiciary is without its contradictions. The Bureau has filed those separately. The Bureau commends this ruling because commendations are how the Bureau documents that the mechanism can be resisted — that the antenna does not always hold, that the sub-esophageal ganglion does not always comply, that the cockroach occasionally moves under its own direction. The Bureau records these moments because they are real, and because the record requires them.