BJP MP writes to USCIRF, says Sharjeel in jail for alleged role in Delhi riots, not faith

BJP MP Sujeet Kumar. File.

BJP MP Sujeet Kumar has sent a letter to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) rejecting its characterisation of Sharjeel Imam as being detained for his religious views. He chairs the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Law & Justice, Personnel and Public Grievances.

In the letter addressed to USCIRF director Asif Mahmood, Mr. Kumar stated that Mr. Imam was arrested for his alleged involvement in the 2020 Delhi riots, rather than his faith.

“Imam is NOT in jail for his faith, or for his religious advocacy (both fundamental rights, guaranteed to him by the Indian Constitution). He is held in the alleged conspiracy behind the February 2020 riots in north-east Delhi, in which 53 people died, a case the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India has held to concern not his opinions but ‘a proposed method of paralysing civic life and choking essential supplies’. In January 2026 the same Hon’ble Bench heard the bail pleas of seven accused in this case, all of them Muslim, and granted bail to five while refusing it to Sharjeel Imam and Umar Khalid, finding that the evidence gave them a ‘central and formative role’. Faced with seven Muslim accused, the Hon’ble Court weighed the evidence against each of them on its own merits; while your Commission shamelessly picked one of the seven and saw nothing but his religion, a textbook case of the very discrimination your Commission exists to report, so next year’s annual report should include a chapter on the Commission itself,” wrote Mr Kumar.

“Was the ‘advocacy’ the speeches that the Sessions Court in Delhi found, prima facie, to have a tendency to incite violence, and challenging ‘the territorial integrity of India?’ If that is religious freedom advocacy, the Commission has invented a new religion, and India is not converting,” his letter read.

The USCIRF designated India as a ‘Country of Particular Concern’ (CPC) on the issue of religious freedom in its 2026 report and posted about Mr. Imam on its website and X handle.