A year after CAA, law is dormant but hounding of protesters continue

Thirty-year-old Raeez* spent nearly 260 days in prison after being arrested for participating and alleged rioting in an anti-CAA protest held in Mangaluru in December 2019. While the police failed to show evidence of his involvement in the riots, the arrest shattered his life.

Now out on bail, as Raeez tries to rebuild his life and gain trust among neighbours, the constant threat of the possibility of arrest again anytime without reason or evidence worries him to no end. His problems are aggravated by the fact that he has to do his fish trade in a highly polarised environment in the coastal city of Karnataka.

CAA’s status

Almost a year after the Bharatiya Janata Party led government at the Centre passed the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), 2019, the legislation is yet to come into force. The government failed to notify the rules within the stipulated time and sought extension twice this year.

On one hand, a batch of Pakistani Hindus and Sikh refugees, that the law envisaged to protect, are reportedly leaving India and heading back to their home country after having lost hopes of acquiring Indian citizenship.

On the other hand, the government continues to arrest, interrogate and charge sheet people for the anti-CAA protests held between December 2019 and February 2020, even as many languish in various jails for 8-10 months without trials having even started.

In certain cases, the courts have made scathing remarks against the police and the state for not producing enough evidence to prove the charges.

And those arrested and released on bail continue to face hardship in their daily lives as the harrowing experience has devastated their sense of freedom in this country.

Baseless charges

Raeez was among the 21 arrested for alleged involvement in the agitation which saw the death of two people in police firing last December. They were later released on bail.

Raeez, however, claims he wasn’t a participant but only a spectator to the protest that erupted spontaneously despite police enforcing section 144 (unlawful assembly) on December 19.

Police booked him and several others for unlawful assembly, armed with lethal weapons, and an attempt to set fire to the North Police Station, Mangaluru.

They invoked the Indian Penal Code and Karnataka Prevention of Destruction & Loss of Property Act, that included charges for rioting (armed with deadly weapon), attempt to murder, causing destruction to public property and deterring public servants from discharging their duties among others.

But except for producing a photo in which Raeez was seen standing amid a violent mob, the police did not have any other material to prove the charges against him.

The Karnataka High Court granted all the accused bail in (February) within two months of arrest and observed that though the police stated that the alleged persons’ involvement were captured in the CCTV footage and photographs, they failed to produce evidence to show that the arrested were armed with deadly weapons.

In the instant case lodged by the police after the protests, FIRs included 1,500-2,000 Muslim youth as accused (without naming all), saying they were armed with sticks, stones and soda bottles.

To this, the court yet again remarked that in an offence involving a large number of accused, the identity and participation of each accused must be fixed with reasonable certainty. But that wasn’t done.

“In the present cases, a perusal of the case records produced by the learned SPP-I (special public prosecutor) indicate that the identity of the accused involved in the alleged incident appear to have been fixed on the basis of their affiliation to PFI (Popular Front of India) and they being members of Muslim community,” the court noted.

It also said that merely opposing the CAA could not be termed as an “unlawful object” within the framework of the law.

But the state opposed the bail order and challenged it in the Supreme Court, which granted a stay in March. Since then Raeez and 20 others spent another seven months in jail until the apex court granted bail in September.

Poor treatment in jail

“The food served inside was not of good quality. Only for two of the eight months in jail, my family members were allowed to send me some food. There was TV and nothing else to do. We were not assigned any work nor were we taught anything,” Raeez says.

One of the shocking things that he encountered in prison was that the authorities separated the prisoners on religious lines. Hindus and Muslims were placed in different cells.

Mangalore police resorted to lathi charge and arrested 38 people following a protest against #CAA.#CAAProtests pic.twitter.com/rLF8KYRzfl

— Arun Dev (@ArunDev1) December 16, 2019

Speaking to The Federal, Mangaluru jail superintendent Chandan Patel defends the decision saying the bifurcation happened after clashes erupted between Hindu and Muslim prisoners back in 2015 and 2016.

“The authorities tried to keep them in different cells with at least 30 communal incidents within jail premises. But in the last two months, we are slowly allowing people of different religions in a single cell,” he said.

Raeez also complained that he was denied an injection that he needed to take once every month. He had lost a finger on his right hand and injured his left leg in an accident. He was able to walk after the doctors inserted a rod in his left leg, but needed an injection every month, which the jail authorities denied, saying they could not procure it from outside.

Another prisoner, who “questioned” the poor treatment meted out to anti-CAA protesters, says the authorities transferred him to a different prison in another district citing COVID reasons.

Syed Ghani*, who spent about 250 days in two different prisons, says when the authorities shifted him to a new prison, he could not bear the cold and the beddings were not protective enough.

Besides, he lost his mother, who, he says, died worrying for her two sons arrested in the riots case.

“She passed away, worried for us. The authorities did not even allow me to participate in the last rites although they allowed me to see the event through a video conference call,” Ghani says.

Courts across the country have come down heavily on the state and the police for either not submitting enough proofs or booking people under wrong sections of the law, criminalising and victimising protesters.

UP: Allahabad HC observations

Besides charging many without proper evidence, the Yogi Adityanath-led Uttar Pradesh government put up posters of people allegedly involved in the protests to ‘name and shame’ them, and also issued orders to recover money from those accused for damages caused to public property. Recently, it declared 14 protesters as absconding and announced cash rewards for their arrest.

While the accused were not proved guilty, both the Supreme Court and the Allahabad High Court came down heavily on the government for naming and shaming them.

On December 3, the Allahabad High Court stayed all proceedings of coercive action against two accused against whom the government issued recovery notice for damages to public property.

SR Darapuri, a retired IPS officer working on human rights issues, who was arrested and released on bail and also faced similar recovery notices, welcomed the court’s move.

In November, the same court stayed the arrest of two persons charged with sedition during one such protest in Prayagraj, formerly Allahabad. While the petitioners contended that they did not commit the alleged offence and said that the state was trying to falsely implicate them, the court did not quash the FIR, in which the accused were not named, but stayed the arrest and ordered the police to submit sufficient evidence.

Madras High Court observations

In November, the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court quashed an FIR against advocate and human rights activist Henri Tiphagne and another person who participated in anti-CAA protest in Madurai.

The police claimed that the accused held a demonstration against the Act and caused public nuisance and disrupted the interference with the free flow of traffic.

Judge Nisha Banu, taking cognisance that no untoward incident took place and the protest was peaceful, and also that the FIR did not disclose any act of violence, ordered that the prosecution was not warranted. “Quashing the same would secure the ends of justice,” the judge said.

Delhi High Court observations

Unlike the Allahabad and Madras HCs, the Delhi High Court somewhat differed in its rulings on the anti-CAA cases. In one instance, the court refused bail to 27-year-old university student Asif Iqbal Tanha, saying “vociferous agitation in the guise of Citizen Amendment Bill, were meant to cause or intended to cause disaffection against India”.

Tanha has been charged under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) in the riots that happened in northeast Delhi, subsequent to the anti-CAA protests and ahead of the Delhi assembly elections. The police charged him with conspiring with former JNU students Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam to “overthrow the government”.

In another instance, the court held that there were justifiable grounds for extending the time to complete investigation against Imam in a case related to alleged inflammatory speeches during the protests against CAA and NRC.

While the cases are ongoing across the country in various courts, and the government is showing no interest in implementing the law, those in jail are having tough time with the police for not following procedures in booking cases, arresting people and submitting proof to prove the accused as guilty.

Meanwhile, BJP and its sympathisers have gone all out to condemn anybody and everybody going against the government’s version of the law. They branded student protesters as ‘Tukde Tukde gang’, Muslims protesters as ‘anti-nationals’, activists and intellectuals as ‘urban naxals’, Kashmiris protesters as Pakistanis, protesting NGOs as foreign-funded with anti-development agenda, and journalists reporting police excess as ‘presstitutes’.

But it hasn’t deterred the Shaheen Bagh protesters as they have vowed to revive the agitation after the pandemic is brought under control.

A first time offender, Raeez, says the whole incident has shaken his spirit and increased his financial burden. With the COVID crisis hampering his business, it’s a double whammy for Raeez. With two children aged two and six, he says he appealed to his family members to conceal the fact he was in jail for so long and to tell them that he had been in Dubai.

Even now, the police and different investigating agencies call him to the police station to question regarding the incident and his role in the riots. Every two weeks, he has to sign at the local police station.

“I manage to survive the mental trauma. The day I was released, I felt the outside world was a heaven,” Raeez said. “But I worry everyday as to whether I would face arrest again without reason or evidence.”

(*Name changed to protect privacy)