Days before Zohran Mamdani became the New York Mayor, he met jailed ex-JNU student Umar Khalid's father, Syed Qasim Rasool Ilyas. Khalid’s father said he met Mamdani on December 9 for around 25 minutes and he thanked him for reading Khalid's jail diary. "He said he always thinks about Umar's incarceration and that he must get bail now," Ilyas said.