Framed and Hanged: How the Indian State Persecutes Dissent

Apoorvanand

Over the past few months, I have increasingly felt as if I am becoming a character in a Kafkaesque drama. It all started in late April when a civil rights activist called me regarding some information appearing in the press that the police is investigating a “professor” for his role in plotting the communal violence that shook Delhi in late February. She thought that person could be me.

She was working on the Bhima Koregaon case, in which five intellectuals and activists were arrested following clashes between right-wing Hindu groups and Dalits, prompted by the desecration of a Dalit shrine in the state of Maharashtra.

She felt that the actions of the authorities after the Delhi violence might be following a similar pattern – throwing false accusations of conspiracy at public figures.

I did not think much of what she said until May 22, when in the middle of the night, I was awakened by a friend frantically calling me. She had just heard about a report aired by news channel The Times Now that evening, which had claimed that a certain Delhi University professor, part of a “leftist, Islamist, radical coterie”, had plotted to incite violence during the visit of US President Donald Trump to India to portray the government as intolerant to minorities.

These allegations were aired on prime-time TV and were watched by hundreds of thousands of viewers. My friend, too, was sure that the unnamed professor was none other than me and wanted to warn me.

Me, a professor of Hindi and a writer, planning violence? I did write a number of articles about the Delhi violence, which may have upset certain quarters, but I never imagined that they would go as far as concocting such a fantastic allegation and drag me into the ongoing “conspiracy” investigation by the police.

So I tried to dispel my friend’s fear and said she was reading too much into what was simply the flight of imagination of a section of the media, which had to keep whetting the appetite of its audience.

The matter, however, turned out to be serious. Shortly after, another report appeared on a YouTube channel called Capital TV, which repeated the same allegations.

More friends started calling and saying I should not take it lightly and that I was indeed being targeted in these reports. My family too became worried. My wife, who had just lost her father, cut short a stay with her family in Patna to be with me.

Two months later, on July 30, a notice came to me from the special cell of Delhi police that is probing this so-called “conspiracy angle” of the investigation into the Delhi communal violence.

To help the reader understand why such an angle was introduced in the first place and why I, along with many others, have become a convenient scapegoat, I must provide some background.

The riots in February came as a shock, but we, observers and critics of the politics of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its pronounced majoritarianism, had apprehensions even earlier that such violence might be unleashed any day on Muslims.

What was the basis of our fear? In December 2019, the BJP, using its majority in parliament, had secured approval for the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which created a pathway for Hindu, Sikh, Christian, Parsi, Jain and Buddhist refugees from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan to attain Indian citizenship on grounds of religious persecution. Muslims were excluded.

This move was preceded by a long ideological campaign by the leaders of the ruling party who kept threatening to throw out “Bangladeshis” who had allegedly entered the country illegally. It was not difficult for anyone to understand that the term “Bangladeshi” was a code word for Muslims in general.

The passage of the new law introduced an element of religion in defining citizenship. It went against the secular principles of the Indian constitution. It was designed to insult Muslims.

The Muslim community felt hurt and humiliated and started protesting against this discriminatory law. Demonstrations were held in various places and by different communities, including in universities such as Jamia Millia Islamia, which was raided by police on December 15.

Meanwhile, a unique protest started taking shape in a dense, predominantly Muslim area, known as Shaheen Bagh, in southern Delhi. Women of the neighbourhood came out and started occupying a section of the road close to them. The protest soon spread to other parts of Delhi and was joined by many Muslims and some non-Muslims alike, especially students and the youth. People like me who have been long critical of the sectarian turn of the ruling establishment in India felt enthused about these protests. We felt that they might give strength to the opposition and help it find its voice and secular resolve.

Not only was there no response from the government, but also BJP functionaries started actively inciting anti-Muslim sentiments ahead of the local elections in Delhi in February. They gave a communal twist to a protest that sought to restore the secular principle of equal citizenship. The air was thick with wild theories. A whisper campaign to tarnish the secular image of the protests succeeded in turning a normal Hindu mind against the protesters.

Despite this hate campaign, the BJP lost the assembly election. Its frustration grew and it continued with its vilification campaign.

Eventually, on February 22, some female protesters started coming out on the main roads and blocking traffic – a tactic many citizens’ acts of civil disobedience had used before. The difference was that the government did not treat these protesters as citizens of India. Its leaders portrayed them as “enemies”. Shortly after, BJP leaders announced they would take law into their own hands if the demonstrations did not disperse.

On February 24, as Trump started his official visit to India, violence broke out but the police did little to stop it. In the following days, the High Court asked the police about its reluctance to act against BJP functionaries inciting violence and directed it to facilitate the safe passage of ambulances carrying injured people and ensure the protection of victims.

The violence left 53 dead, hundreds injured, hundreds of houses and businesses damaged or destroyed. Three-quarters of those killed were Muslims, the rest were Hindus.

I, along with members of civil society, went to the areas where violence had taken place, observed it first-hand, and talked to Hindus and Muslims. My understanding was that it was preplanned violence. I talked to members of the security forces and could see a distinct hostility among them regarding Muslims.

I saw the apathy of the Delhi government in arranging relief for the victims, again mostly Muslims. It took a lot of noise from civil society to move the state government to set up a relief camp for displaced victims.

Then the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March made any kind of movement impossible. Relief and rehabilitation efforts took a hit. Many of us who supported the anti-CAA protests tried to help the victims by organising the distribution of food, clothes, medicines, etc and helping the injured in getting medical aid. We somehow managed to keep the relief operation going.

It was in the midst of all this that I learned that the investigative agencies had started to weave a narrative of a “conspiracy” aimed at defaming and embarrassing the government when Trump was in town. It is worthwhile to note that this so-called ‘conspiracy’ is not even an offence in itself – it is not a crime to organise and peacefully protest even if it embarrasses the government.

Nevertheless, the police, while framing charge sheets, wrote about a drawn-out conspiracy going back to the Jamia protests. It even tried to implicate a known peace activist like Harsh Mander – who had petitioned the Supreme Court to look into the BJP’s hate speech – in inciting street violence. It claimed that those protesting against the citizenship law and their supporters had a nefarious anti-government agenda and the February violence was part of it. The political narrative and now the legal case seem to assume that the fact of the street protest was apriori reason for retaliatory violence.

Young Muslim women and men who were involved in the protests were getting arrested even before the February violence. Two young non-Muslim female activists supporting the protests were also detained. Notices from police started reaching the homes of students who had to move to their hometowns due to the pandemic.

The investigation is trying desperately to find evidence of a crime that never happened: the claim that gullible Muslims were misled about the new law, provoked to protest and brought to the roads, which in turn provoked the Hindus to become violent.

Targeting of writers and intellectuals, who were active in these protests, is a clear design of this government to set an example and give a warning that the act of dissent would be treated as a crime and that non-Muslims should not dare to come out in the support of Muslims.

On August 3, I headed to the special cell of the Delhi police to follow up on the notice I received. After being interrogated for five hours, I decided to issue a statement, in which I wrote: “While cooperating and respecting the right of police authorities to conduct a full, fair and thorough investigation, one can only hope that the probe would focus on the real instigators and perpetrators of the violence against a peaceful citizens’ protest and the people of Northeast Delhi. It should not lead to further harassment and victimisation of the protesters and their supporters, who asserted their democratic rights through constitutional means.”

The statement was widely covered by the media. The Times of India, a leading mainstream daily, wrote an editorial criticising the line of investigation. It wrote: “Delhi University professor Apoorvanand’s interrogation, purportedly over support for the anti-NRC-CAA protests that long preceded the riots, spins a deceptive narrative. If a false equivalence is sought to be drawn between dissent and rioting, nothing could be more absurd and self-defeating. Dissent makes democracy meaningful and representative.”

The police reacted to this editorial by issuing a statement, saying: “criminal jurisprudence treats the act of conspiring to commit a crime as “a distinct evil” from the crime itself.”

This rebuttal was rapidly followed by a series of “exposes” by a section of the media known to be closely aligned to the ruling establishment. On August 10, Zee News claimed in a news report that Gulfisha Fatima, a young activist involved in the anti-CAA protests who, like many other young protesters, is in jail on charges of inciting, planning and participating in the violence, had confessed to the Delhi Police that I held many secret meetings with her, along with other activists, to instigate and plan the riots.

Similar reports were carried by other media outlets, like Aaj Tak, DNA, TV9, Opindia and others.

These exposes have been followed by more alleged “disclosures” made by people who are in jail for a very long time. They claim to expose other aspects of the “conspiracy” the investigative agency has been talking about.

It needs to be noted that the law specifically says that custodial confessions cannot be treated as evidence. Also, the High Court of Delhi in a ruling restrained the police from sharing any information regarding a person who is in jail while being investigated for the February violence, lest it becomes a media trial against the person.

Since my interrogation, I have not heard back from the police after August 3. But I am only one of the characters in this Orwellian script. The police is busy collecting testimonies and evidence against people it seeks to paint as conspirators behind the violence. And they are, in the eyes of the investigative agencies, obviously those who had supported and participated in the anti-CAA protests.

It is clear now that the establishment is using state agencies and a pliable media to spread hate against minorities, especially Muslims and liberal intellectuals, writers, academics who have been speaking up for the rights of minorities.

One feels sorry that the energy, talent and the expertise of the people involved in these investigations are being used to forge something so surreal. They are being made to work against the very people they are meant to serve. I do feel dismayed.

So where to from here? I abhor the idea of young Muslim activists left alone to suffer the state oppression for having dared to protest and therefore, I would happily own the protests. So, my fate should not be different from what they are going to face. If we are to become one people, can our fates be different?

People like me can only wait and hope for the constitutional conscience of the organs of the state to stir, civic morality in all sections of the society to awaken. I can go on doing my duty of writing and speaking, of alerting my people that they were making a Faustian pact and would be left soulless, that we cannot live as Indians with our heads held high if minorities are reduced to the level of second-class citizens.

(Apoorvanand teaches at Delhi University.)

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Delhi Police Complicit in February 2020 Violence: Polis Project

Courtesy: Sabrangindia

A report by the Polis Project has come down heavily on the role of the Delhi Police in framing human rights defenders for the violence that broke out in Delhi during late February 2020. The report titled Manufacturing Evidence: How the Police is framing and arresting constitutional rights defenders in India “presents evidence of the abuse of power, violations of due process, and attempts at manufacturing evidence by the Delhi Police in order to weave a ‘conspiracy’ about the involvement of anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and National Register of Citizens (NRC) protesters in the violence.”

The Polis Project is an international group that claims to be a “hybrid research and journalism organization”. It begins by quoting what IPS officer Vibhuti Narain Rai had told human rights defender and journalist Teesta Setalvad in an interview in 1995, “No riot can last for more than 24 hours without consent of the state.”

Taking forward this premise, the Polis Project state in their report that the Delhi Police “failed to help survivors” and that their “refusal/delay/obfuscation in the registration of FIRs by victims, and the failure to disclose the name of persons arrested/FIRs violates due process and helps shield the guilty.” The report goes on to further claims that police are “creating a baseless narrative about a ‘conspiracy’ that implicates Muslim victims of violence and activists protesting erosion of Constitutional rights of citizens, and erases actions of Hindu nationalist provocations.”

The report says that the police’s investigations are compromised by “presumption of guilt rather than presentation of evidence”, and also alleges “suppression of evidence related to violence by Hindu nationalists.” It also accused the Delhi Police of “manufacturing false evidence” and Islamophobic behaviour”.

The Polis Project calls on the authorities to immediately release all human rights defenders and students being held in pre-trial detention, as well as to book political leaders against whom it alleges “there is clear evidence of incitement and abetment to violence”. The report clearly names BJP leader Kapil Mishra in this regard and also notes the role of Whatsapp groups, especially one called ‘Kattar Hindu Ekta’ in spreading hate and organising targeted violence against Muslims.

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Anti-CAA Protesters: Victims Twice Over

Divya Trivedi

Usee ka shahr, wahee muddaee, wahee munsif

Hamein yaqeen tha, hamaara qusoor niklega

(It’s his city, he himself is the petitioner and himself the judge;

I was sure, I’d be held guilty).

— Ameer Qazalbash (poet and lyricist)

An old Muslim man from the riot-affected area of Mustafabad in North East Delhi recited this couplet to a fact-finding team of the Delhi Minorities Commission (DMC) to express how the community perceives the February riots and subsequent investigations. In all, 11 mosques, five madrasas, a Muslim shrine and a graveyard were attacked and damaged in the violence that began on February 23 and continued in waves over the week. As many as 53 people were killed and property worth hundreds of crores looted and torched, including 226 houses and 487 shops.

According to the fact-finding report of the DMC, headed by M.R. Shamshad, Advocate-on-Record, Supreme Court, the violence was “seemingly planned and directed to teach a lesson to a certain community which dared to protest against a discriminatory law. Attempts ever since are being made to shield the planners, instigators, leaders and perpetrators of that violence and turn the victims into culprits.”

Said Shamshad: “We stand at the threshold of a crucial stage. Most victims of the religious minority have stated stories and put forth illustrations reflecting religious bias against them, inasmuch as being treated as a separate and distinct community rather than citizens of the country. I have no doubt in stating that the same discriminatory bias and hate became reason for the minorities to take a lead in the protests against the discriminatory CAA [Citizenship Amendment Act]. The protests were legitimate and peaceful. Seemingly, to crush the protests, with support of the administration and the police, a retaliatory plan of pro-CAA protesters was worked out to trigger violence at a large scale which led to loss of lives and damage to hundreds of properties owned mainly by the Muslim religious minority.”

Even as interrogations, arrests and charge-sheeting of anti-CAA protesters, naming them as instigators of the riots, continue despite the raging coronavirus pandemic, more and more people feel that the inquiry is a ruse for political vendetta not just against Muslims but also against the critics of the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government. The latest civil society activist to be questioned by the Special Cell of the Delhi Police in connection with the riots is Prof. Apoorvanand of Delhi University. On August 3, the Hindi professor was summoned under FIR no. 59/20 relating to the riots and questioned for five hours. His phone was seized for further probe.

Said Prof. Apoorvanand: “While cooperating and respecting the right of the police authorities to conduct a full, fair and thorough investigation, one can only hope that the probe would focus on the real instigators and perpetrators of the violence against a peaceful citizens’ protest and the people of North East Delhi. It should not lead to further harassment and victimisation of the protesters and their supporters, who asserted their democratic rights through constitutional means, while stating their dissent to the passage of the CAA and the decision of the Government of India to operationalise the National Population Register [NPR] and the National Register of Citizens [NRC] all over the country. It is disturbing to see a theory emerging which treats the supporters of the protesters as the source of violence. I would urge the police and expect their probe to be thorough, just and fair so that truth prevails.”

The Delhi Police has been summoning civil society activists, students and anti-CAA protesters and trying to ascertain their role in the violence. Former Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union president N. Sai Balaji has asserted that two non-governmental organisations (NGOs) close to the Sangh Parivar, through their fact-finding reports, had provided the script for the violence and the police were filling in the characters now.

The reports by the two NGOs, Call for Justice and the Group of Intellectuals and Academicians, named Pinjra Tod, the Jamia Coordination Committee (JCC), alumni of Jamia Millia Islamia, the Popular Front of India (PFI), local politicians of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), JNU student Sharjeel Imam and the Bhim Army as instigators of the riots.

Until March 18, the Delhi Police had arrested 3,304 people in connection with the riots, according to Minister of State for Home Affairs G. Kishen Reddy. They include those named in the NGO reports—Natasha Narwal and Devangana Kalita of Pinjra Tod; Mohd Danish, Parvex Alam and Mohd Ilyas of the PFI; former AAP councillor Tahir Hussain; Safoora Zargar (granted bail) and Meeran Haider of the JCC; and Gulfisha Fatima, an MBA student. Khalid Saifi, a member of the organisation United Against Hate, and Ishrat Jehan, a former Congress councillor, too were arrested from the Khureji Khas anti-CAA protest site and charged under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), like the others. JNU student Sharjeel Imam has been lodged in an Assam prison that also has the activist and peasant leader Akhil Gogoi and other anti-NRC protesters. Both Sharjeel and Gogoi have reportedly tested positive for coronavirus.

Activists under scrutiny

The NGO reports point to the extensive use of social media in the riots. The Delhi Police has been specifically probing WhatsApp groups to arrest people.

One particular group that has come under the scrutiny of the Delhi Police’s Special Cell is the Delhi Protests Solidarity Group (DPSG). Several members of the group have been called in for questioning and more are likely to be summoned. Created in December 2019, the group was intended as a voluntary support group for anti-CAA protests. It is made up of prominent activists including Rahul Roy, Saba Dewan, Yogendra Yadav, Kavita Krishnan, Harsh Mander, Anjali Bharadwaj, N.D. Jayaprakash, Nadeem Khan and Annie Raja. Prof. Apoorvanand and Pinjra Tod members were also part of the group. All of them have been vocal critics of the CAA and the Modi government.

N.D. Jayaprakash of the Delhi Science Forum told Frontline:

“As explained in detail in my five-part article in The Wire, the Union Home Ministry deliberately took no action to prevent physical confrontation between CAA supporters and anti-CAA protesters despite adequate and repeated forewarning issued to the Home Ministry by the Intelligence Wing of the Delhi Police following [BJP leader] Kapil Mishra’s inflammatory speech on February 23. If the RAF [Rapid Action Force] had been deployed in adequate strength in time at the right place, the situation could have been controlled before it took an ugly turn. What was equally worse was that even after the riots broke out, the Union Home Ministry did not allow the Delhi Police to respond to nearly 13,000 distress calls for help from riot victims for over 72 hours until midnight on February 26.

“Now the Union Home Ministry is compelling the Delhi Police to file false cases against anti-CAA protesters and against members of the Delhi Protests Solidarity Group to make them scapegoats by pinning the blame on them for allegedly instigating the riots. In the process, there is a concerted attempt to cover up the pivotal role of Kapil Mishra and other CAA supporters in unleashing the violence as well as in concealing the conceited role of the Union Home Ministry in allowing the riots to break out and in prolonging the same.”

The police have held the anti-CAA protesters responsible for the Delhi riots and termed the riots as the result of a “deep-rooted controversy” by them. While Hindu rioters have also been arrested, the conspiracy angle has been attributed only to Muslims and civil society dissenters against the citizenship law. The role of BJP leaders Kapil Sharma, Parvesh Verma and Anurag Thakur who gave provocative speeches is not even being probed by the police.

Petitions in courts

A bunch of petitions filed by individuals, including Harsh Mander and Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Brinda Karat, against the BJP leaders’ hate speeches are pending before the courts. A Delhi High Court bench of Chief Justice D.N. Patel and Justice Prateek Jalan is also hearing a petition against Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, AAP leaders Manish Sisodia and Amanatullah Khan, and All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen leader Waris Pathan for alleged hate speeches.

In an affidavit, the Delhi Police maintained that the investigations had not revealed any evidence to show that the BJP leaders had instigated or participated in the violence. If any link was found between their alleged offensive speeches and the riots, the police said, then they would file the requisite FIRs.

The police also said that prima facie investigations revealed that the violence was not sporadic or spontaneous “but appears to be part of a well-thought-out conspiracy to destabilise the harmony in society”.

So far, 763 cases under various provisions of the Indian Penal Code, the Arms Act, the Prevention to Damage of Public Property Act and the UAPA have been registered, over 200 charge sheets filed and three Special Investigation Teams (SITs) headed by Deputy Commissioners of Police constituted.

The Crime Branch submitted before the High Court that the riots were carefully engineered and funded by “mischievous elements”, who instilled a false panic in the minds of a section of society, instigated them to take law and order into their own hands and resort to violence.

While claiming that the petitioners were trying to distract the court’s attention from the true facts, the Crime Branch argued that the use of terms like “political vendetta”, “state-sponsored pogrom”, “persecution” and “malicious prosecution” appeared to be part of some “undisclosed agenda”.

Earlier, a High Court bench headed by Justice S. Muralidhar had played in court the videos containing the alleged inflammatory speeches of Kapil Mishra. Solicitor General Tushar Mehta told the court that the Delhi Police had deferred the decision to file FIRs as the situation was not “conducive” to it. The FIRs have still not been filed. Justice Muralidhar was transferred to the Punjab and Haryana High Court.

Charge sheets

Three days before Prof. Apoorvanand was summoned for questioning, the Special Cell interrogated former JNU student leader Umar Khalid and confiscated his phone for further probe. He was booked under the UAPA but was called for questioning for the first time on July 31. Umar Khalid, along with Khalid Saifi and former AAP councillor Tahir Hussain, is being made out to be a “mastermind” behind the riots.

In a charge sheet filed by the Delhi Police Crime Branch in connection with the murder of Intelligence Bureau officer Ankit Sharma, Tahir Hussain has been made an accused. Interrogation transcripts of Hussain have been circulating on social media wherein he confesses to have met Umar Khalid at the PFI office in Shaheen Bagh on January 8 to plan the riots along with Khalid Saifi. While the confessions made before the police are not admissible in court, Hussain’s interrogation reports are part of the charge sheets submitted.

According to the interrogation report, Umar Khalid gave assurances regardinglogistics and finances from the PFI, the JCC, politicians, advocates and Muslim organisations. Incidentally, the fact-finding reports submitted to the government by the two NGOs linked to the Sangh Parivar had blamed Umar Khalid for the same and the PFI for funding the riots. One of the organisations, Call for Justice, had stated, “The timing of the attacks, starting from February 23, was very well meticulously planned in advance as evident from Umar Khalid’s comments dated February 17 in which he explicitly mentioned that the riots would take place during the visit of the U.S. President.”

Thereafter, several media reports pointed out that while the charge sheet claims that it was on January 8 that Umar Khalid and the others planned to organise a “big blast” on Donald Trump’s visit to India in February, the first information on Trump’s visit to India was made public on January 14 through a story in The Hindu.

In his speech in the Lok Sabha on the Delhi riots, Union Home Minister Amit Shah also furthered this theory. “United Against Hate—the name sounds so pious but look what they advocated. They said, [Donald] Trump is about to come, we should block the streets.”

United Against Hate, a group comprising diverse activists such as Umar Khalid, Banojyotsna, advocate Tamanna Pankaj, Nadeem Khan and Khalid Saifi, has also featured as an instigator in the police version.

Lawyers associated with the cases say that the fantastic story woven by the investigative authorities will not stand in a court of law. But for the students and activists who are being arrested, the process itself would become the punishment, they said.

While responding to the Supreme Court’s contempt notice against him, advocate Prashant Bhushan questioned the apex court for being a “mute spectator” during the Delhi riots. He said: “When the Delhi riots were unleashed, with daily videos emerging of mobs tearing down and burning mosques, the police force systematically destroying public CCTVs, taking an active part in stone-throwing, massive firing and deaths, blockades of a hospital to prevent assistance to the severely wounded Muslims, etc., the Supreme Court remained a mute spectator while Delhi burnt.”

(Divya Trivedi is a Special Correspondent with Frontline. Article courtesy: Frontline.)