{"id":74345,"date":"2025-09-20T13:00:03","date_gmt":"2025-09-20T04:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/sep\/20\/umar-khalid-five-years-in-jail-without-trial-india"},"modified":"2025-09-20T13:00:03","modified_gmt":"2025-09-20T04:00:03","slug":"this-is-their-attempt-to-silence-him-umar-khalid-reaches-five-years-in-indian-jail-without-trial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=74345","title":{"rendered":"\u2018This is their attempt to silence him\u2019: Umar Khalid reaches five years in Indian jail without trial"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Held since 2020, India\u2019s most prominent political prisoner has become a symbol of repression under the Modi regime<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere is indeed something about captivity that makes one feel like a state of somewhere between life and death,\u201d wrote Umar Khalid in June in a letter penned as his fifth year languishing behind bars approached.<\/p>\n<p>Few understand the purgatory of jail like Khalid. For five years \u2013 since his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2020\/sep\/14\/india-student-activist-umar-khalid-arrested-over-delhi-riots\">arrest in September 2020<\/a> under a draconian terrorism law \u2013 he has remained India\u2019s most prominent political prisoner, to many a potent symbol of the systematic crushing of dissent under the dominant Hindu nationalist regime of the prime minister, Narendra Modi.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/sep\/20\/umar-khalid-five-years-in-jail-without-trial-india\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Held since 2020, India\u2019s most prominent political prisoner has become a symbol of repression under the Modi regime\u201cThere is indeed something about captivity that makes one feel like a state of somewhere between life and death,\u201d wrote Umar Khalid in Jun&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":649,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[62,61,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-india","category-south-and-central-asia","category-world-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/649"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=74345"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74346,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74345\/revisions\/74346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=74345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=74345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=74345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}