NEW DELHI, May 20 -- The Supreme Court has once again been drawn into a constitutional debate over the scope of personal liberty under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), after a two-judge bench emphatically reaffirmed earlier this week that "bail is the rule and jail is the exception" even in terrorism-related prosecutions, while the Delhi police rushed to another bench hearing Delhi riots cases pressing for a resolution of the issue by a larger bench.

The context is the May 18 judgment by a bench of justices BV Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan granting bail to Jammu & Kashmir resident Syed Iftikhar Andrabi in a narco-terror case investigated by the National Investigation Agency. In a strongly worded ruling, the bench held that ...