India tells US panel to ‘stop lecturing others’ after remarks about Sharjeel Imam’s detention

The Indian ambassador to the United States on Saturday said that the US Commission on International Religious Freedom should introspect on its “prejudices” and “stop lecturing others”, after the panel shared a profile of jailed activist Sharjeel Imam on social media.

The panel stated on Friday that Imam is “a Muslim man detained in India for his religious freedom advocacy”.

Imam has been in prison for more than six years in the 2020 Delhi riots conspiracy case, registered under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act. The trial in the case is yet to begin.

USCRIF has no locus standi to sit in judgment over the constitutional rights of Indian citizens.

Its habitual partisan, ill-informed, and jaundiced assessments cannot diminish India’s constitutional commitment to religious freedom and equal rights for all faiths.

India… https://t.co/ED2qqdkVuE

— Amb Vinay Mohan Kwatra (@AmbVMKwatra) November 14, 2026

“In January 2020, authorities arrested Imam, a Muslim student activist, for participating in peaceful protests opposing the religious discriminatory Citizenship Amendment Act in December 2019 and January 2020,” the panel said in its profile.

Responding to this, Indian Ambassador Vinay Mohan Kwatra said that the panel has no authority “to sit in judgement over the constitutional rights of Indian citizens”.

The panel’s “habitual partisan, ill-informed, and jaundiced assessments cannot diminish India’s constitutional commitment to religious freedom and equal rights for all faiths”, he added.

Imam, along with Umar Khalid and other activists, had been arrested between January 2020 and September 2020 in connection with the communal violence that broke out in North East Delhi in February 2020 between supporters of the contentious Citizenship Amendment Act and those opposing it. The violence had left 53 dead and hundreds injured. Most of those killed were Muslims.

The persons accused in the matter have been charged under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, the Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act, the Arms Act and sections of the Indian Penal Code.

The police have claimed that the violence was part of a larger conspiracy to defame the Narendra Modi government and was planned by those who organised the protests against the amended Citizenship Act.

Khalid and Imam have moved the Supreme Court seeking bail in the matter.

In September, the US religious freedom panel accused India of “weaponising” the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act to detain religious minorities, including Imam and Khalid, for “simply engaging in peaceful protests”.

In its 2026 annual report, the religious freedom panel had recommended that the state department designate India as a country of particular concern for engaging in “systematic, ongoing, and egregious religious freedom violations”.

India has previously said that the commission has a “pattern of issuing biased and politically motivated assessments”.

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Sneha.