Prayagraj: The Allahabad High Court on May 16, 2026 granted bail to eight of the fourteen Muslim men booked in connection with an iftar gathering held on a boat in the river Ganga in Varanasi in March. The bail pleas of the remaining accused are still pending.
The separate bail petitions were listed before single-judge benches of Justice Jitendra Kumar Sinha and Justice Rajiv Lochan Shukla.
The fourteen accused — Azad Ali, Aamir Kaiki, Danish Saifi, Mohd. Ahmad, Nehal Afridi, Mahfooz Alam, Mohd. Anas, Mohd. Awwal, Mohd. Tahseem, Mohd. Ahmad alias Raja, Mohd. Noor Ismail, Mohd. Tausif Ahmad, Mohd. Faizan, and Mohd. Sameer — had earlier been denied bail by a magistrate and subsequently by a sessions court before approaching the High Court.
The case was registered after videos of the men breaking their fast during Ramadan on a boat in the Ganga went viral on social media. A first information report was lodged on the complaint of Rajat Jaiswal, the Varanasi city unit president of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM), alleging that the men had hurt religious sentiments and discarded the remains of chicken biryani into the river.
The accused were initially booked under several provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), including Section 298 (defiling a place of worship), Section 299 (malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings), Section 196(1)(b) (promoting enmity), Section 270 (public nuisance), Section 279 (fouling water of a public spring or reservoir), and Section 223(b) (disobedience of an order promulgated by a public servant), along with Section 24 of the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974.
More serious charges were subsequently added. Section 308(5) of the BNS, which penalises extortion by threat of death or grievous hurt, was invoked after the boat owners alleged that the accused had forcibly taken the vessel from them. The accused were also charged under Section 67 of the Information Technology Act, 2000, which penalises the publication or transmission of obscene material in electronic form.
Case Details: Azad Ali & Ors. v. State of Uttar Pradesh (and connected bail petitions), Allahabad High Court. Before Justice Jitendra Kumar Sinha and Justice Rajiv Lochan Shukla (separate benches). Order dated May 16, 2026.
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