A Delhi Court on Thursday (30th July) stayed the non-bailable warrants (NBWs) issued against Communist and Students Federation of India (SFI) leader Aishe Ghosh in connection with a 2021 criminal case. The relief order was officially passed by Judicial Magistrate First Class Vijayshree Rathore at the Patiala House courts complex. This judicial development came exactly a day after officers from the Delhi Police arrived at the New Delhi headquarters of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) to execute the non-bailable warrants issued against Ghosh by the court.

The court had been compelled to issue the non-bailable warrants after Ghosh failed to appear before it during the previous scheduled hearing of the ongoing case. Seeking immediate legal remedy, Advocates KN Jayasankar and Subhash Chandran KR, representing Ghosh, moved an urgent application before JMFC Rathore. In their submission, her legal counsel stated that she could not appear on the last date of the hearing due to unavoidable circumstances. Taking the application into consideration, Ghosh was subsequently granted relief by the court, staying the non-bailable warrants.

However, the Communist cabal distorted the facts, as usual, and grabbed the opportunity to cast aspersions on the Delhi police and the Modi government, claiming that the police action was motivated by Ghosh’s involvement in the recent Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) protests. Despite the Delhi Police’s clear public clarification confirming that the investigating officer showed up at the CPI-M office solely to execute court-issued non-bailable warrants in the 2021 case, the CPI-M alleged that the police targeted Ghosh for supporting the student protests.

Taking to social media to amplify their claim, the CPI-M posted a video of the police visit on X and described the police action as a “brazen intrusion.” Through this framing, the party portrayed a completely valid police action as illegitimate and unlawful and misrepresented it as an attempt by the Modi government to stifle students’ voices.

What is the case against Aishe Ghosh?

The underlying legal proceedings relate directly to an agitation held by the SFI and the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) members on February 12, 2021, outside Banga Bhawan in Chanakyapuri. The demonstration was organised against an alleged police crackdown on student unions and youth protestors in Kolkata who were opposing the Citizenship Amendment Act-National Register of Citizens (CAA-NRC).

According to police accounts of the event, the protest was deliberately held in a prohibited area in clear violation of active prohibitory orders. The police noted that the assembly of protesters raised loud slogans and blocked the public road, refusing to disperse despite clear directions given by law enforcement personnel on the spot. Subsequently, a First Information Report (FIR) was lodged by the police at the Barakhamba Road Police Station against Aishe Ghosh and 15 others, under IPC sections 188 (disobedience to order duly promulgated by public servant), 34 (common intention), and 447 (criminal trespass) on the exact same day.

The criminal case arising from this FIR continues to be actively heard at the Patiala House Courts complex. Investigative outlet OpIndia accessed official court documents related to the ongoing proceedings, as the original FIR in the case was not publicly available.

Multiple non-bailable warrants issued by the court against Ghosh

The judicial process surrounding this matter has been going on for about six years and has not yet reached the stage of final judgment. Multiple bailable and non-bailable warrants have been issued by the court against Ghosh since the commencement of the trial simply to secure her presence on designated hearing dates. A total of six bailable warrants and four non-bailable warrants have been issued by the court so far due to her repeated absences.

In legal procedure, a court issues bailable warrants after an accused repeatedly fails to appear and respond to official court summons. It is issued by the bench when an accused person fails to appear before the court, but the judge does not yet consider complete custodial detention necessary. A bailable warrant serves as a less coercive way than a non-bailable warrant of securing the appearance of an accused before the court. It officially empowers the police to arrest the accused, but allows the individual to be released on bail after fulfilling the specific financial or personal conditions outlined in the warrant, without needing to be produced before the court first.

However, if the accused continuously fails to respond to bailable warrants, the court then escalates the matter to issue non-bailable warrants. A non-bailable warrant directly mandates the police to arrest the accused without granting officers any discretion to release the person on bail prior to being produced before the court. The accused individual, however, retains the right to file an application requesting the court to cancel or withdraw the issued non-bailable warrant.

This procedural loop is precisely what Aishe Ghosh has been repeatedly doing throughout this legal process. She has been ignoring the court’s summonses and bailable and non-bailable warrants as a routine matter. Whenever the court issues non-bailable warrants against Ghosh, she subsequently appears before the court through her legal team and requests cancellation.

The specific non-bailable warrants that the Delhi police went to execute at the CPI-M office were issued by the court on April 11, 2026, after noting that the prior warrants issued against her on December 12, 2025, had been returned without being executed. The underlying reason these warrants were returned unserved to the court is that Ghosh was not found at her given residential address, even though she was explicitly informed via a direct phone call regarding the exact date of the hearing. Following this failure to comply, the court went on to issue the non-bailable warrants against her through the Deputy Commissioner of Police.

A comprehensive perusal of the court records shows that Ghosh and her counsel have not appeared before the court since August 2024. The court has been forced to issue multiple bailable warrants and non-bailable warrants against Ghosh due to her persistent non-cooperation in the trial. She has repeatedly failed to appear on scheduled dates of hearing, directly causing extensive delays in the overall trial of the case.

The Leftist strategy of delaying trial

What Aishe Ghosh has been doing in her criminal trial is a classic leftist tactic for delaying court proceedings. We have seen this exact pattern happen in the case of Delhi anti-Hindu riots accused like Umar Khalid, who engineered delays and indulged in forum shopping to secure bail while publicizing his prolonged detention.

In that matter, Umar Khalid’s bail applications were formally rejected by both the District Court and the High Court. After a gap of six months, he approached the Supreme Court requesting bail. His bail hearing was subsequently adjourned 14 times, out of which 7 times it was Umar Khalid and his legal team (led by senior advocate Kapil Sibal) who had explicitly requested the adjournment.

Eventually, Kapil Sibal withdrew Umar Khalid’s Special Leave Petition (SLP) from the Supreme Court, citing a “change in circumstances” and stating that he would “try his luck” in the Sessions Court instead. The Delhi High Court, while rejecting Khalid’s bail plea, saw through his tactics and refused to allow the legal procedure to be exploited and misused.

Khalid had systematically been delaying his own trial while his defense lawyers kept publicly blaming the slow pace of the judicial proceedings for his prolonged incarceration. One naturally wonders why a person languishing in jail would deliberately delay his own trial while simultaneously claiming innocence before the court. Why would an accused who is completely sure of his innocence want to delay the final judgment in his case, which could officially acquit him and set him free? This behavior is only possible when the accused has a guilty conscience and is fully aware that his acts will be laid bare and he will have to face full justice once the judgment is finally delivered.