‘This is their attempt to silence him’: Umar Khalid reaches five years in Indian jail without trial

Held since 2020, India's most prominent political prisoner has become a symbol of repression under the Modi regime

There is indeed something about captivity that makes one feel like a state of somewhere between life and death," wrote Umar Khalid in June in a letter penned as his fifth year languishing behind bars approached.

Few understand the purgatory of jail like Khalid. For five years - since his arrest in September 2020 under a draconian terrorism law - he has remained India's 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.