NAPM releases report on state repression of protestors in UP

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The year 2019, saw the state of Uttar Pradesh witnessing a staunch resistance by the people to the blatantly communal and unconstitutional Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 (CAA) and the proposed National Register of Citizens (NRC). In response to a national call for an All-India protest on December 19 against these draconian laws and decisions, lakhs of common citizens all across the state, hit the roads and protested in a peaceful and democratic way.

Rattled by the public outrage, the state swung into retaliatory mode to clampdown on peaceful protests, attack common people and create a climate of fear, violence and polarization. It attacked students, activists, the human rights community and organizations and civil society groups.

The National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM) has prepared a report on the state repression and extraordinary situation in Uttar Pradesh in the wake of widespread protests against the CAA-NPR-NRC protests. NAPM says that the report is being brought out with a sense of urgency and with an attempt to broadly map out the scale and seriousness of the situation in the state, in particular, the unprecedented excesses committed by the Uttar Pradesh Police since the protests commenced. The information in this report has been obtained from sources in the public domain including official statements, FIR copies, credible news reports, social media accounts as well as reliable conversations with activists, lawyers, journalists from different districts.

The excerpts from the report are stated below.

ATTACK ON THE ALIGARH MUSLIM UNIVERSITY

On the night of December 15, in order to quell a peaceful student protest, the Rapid Action Force (RAF) RAF and police started hurling rabidly communal abuses and firing tear gas shells, rubber bullets, stun grenades, pellets and other kinds of explosive weapons into the crowd that was inside the campus gate.

The army and police personnel entered buildings where students were hiding and attacked them ruthlessly. They even targeted students who were not part of the protests. Consequently, up to 60 students suffered varying degrees of injury including amputation of hands, limb injuries, suffocation and unconsciousness etc. The bikes of students which were parked were vandalized in large numbers. As per an estimate, up to 22 students ‘have gone missing since then’. Wide-spread fear was induced that anyone who speaks up would be charged with NSA! While no action has been taken against the erring officials, FIRs have been filed against 21 named and 500 unnamed students.

The University administration immediately declared winter vacations after this incident leading to a mass exodus of students from the campus. A report released by the AMU Students Union. The Allahabad High Court CJ Bench has taken cognizance of the incident and directed the District Magistrate, Aligarh to ensure all necessary medical assistance & aid to students & persons injured by lathi charge or any other means since December 14. The next hearing in the case is on 2nd Jan, 2019.

STATE ATTEMPTS TO PREVENT PROTESTS ON DECEMBER 19^th

Completely undermining the constitutionally guaranteed rights of citizens under Article 19, invoked Sec 144 CrPC in a blanket sweep to impose ‘curfew’ across the entire state, rather than localised areas which is how Section 144 is legally intended to be used, as laid down by the Apex Court. As per news reports, on December 18, the UP Police issued notices to about 3,000 people across the state, cautioning them to not participate in protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act. These notices were issued under Sec.149 Cr.P.C and Sec 116/107 Cr.P.C, to individuals to not participate in any kind of protest and to execute a bond for keeping peace and good behaviour. Key activists including Adv Shoaib, Sandeep Pandey, SR Darapuri was kept under ‘house-arrest’ from the 18th night /19th early morning.

However, thousands of people both in UP and many other states where Sec 144 was imposed came out on the streets in large numbers and participated in the mass civil disobedience against the CAA. The protests that were entirely peaceful only turned violent after some unidentified miscreants burnt down a bus and some media OB vans, leading to police raining lathi blows on protestors and the situation turning volatile. It was not established as to who exactly were responsible for the same. Some reports indicated that the arson and violence was being carried out by ‘hired rioters’ to sabotage the peaceful protests. In the past couple of days, the security forces have been using excessive force on peaceful protestors, leading to loss of lives and severe life-threatening injuries.

Following this, UP CM Yogi Adityanath announced that his government would ‘take revenge’ on those involved in the violence by confiscating their properties. He said all of them have been marked in the CCTV footage and the state shall seize their property and compensate the losses caused. Within a day, he also ‘appealed people to maintain peace and law and order across the state’ and urging them ‘not to fall for rumours and get misled on the new citizenship law’.

The internet blockade that began soon on December 16 was imposed in 21 districts of UP and it was reported that mobile service was suspended only in Muslim localities of Muzzaffarnagar, while they were restored in the rest of the district. Internet blockade for over two weeks has also led to a serious deficiency in effective communication flow. The state government has not given any specific reasons or justification for the suspension. The suspension of internet has badly affected civilians and local businesses.

THE RISING DEATH TOLL AND INJURIES DUE TO POLICE FIRING: 20 DEAD AND COUNTING

19 people, including a minor have been killed in police firings and brutalities among the state. Media reports stated a senior police official saying that the deaths of at least 14 persons was due to ‘firearm injuries’.

An independent investigation is urgently required to ascertain the exact cause of the deaths due to police firing. This is even more necessary since in several videos that have emerged, policemen are seen with revolvers and batons, aiming and shooting directly at unarmed protestors/civilains, above the waist.

As per a news report, a 17 year old child from Meerut who has a bullet in his spine is also lodged in the Emergency Ward of AIIMS. “The teen’s mother who requested not to be identified out of “fear of the police8 said her son was returning home from a school books manufacturing unit where he works when he allegedly received a gunshot wound at Meerut’s Lisari Gate. He returned around 5 pm, semi-conscious and in bloodied clothes…. He cried all night, as he couldn’t move his arms or legs – we couldn’t take him to hospital, as everything was shut,” said the mother”.

Meerut has seen a total of five deaths due to police firing.

In Kanpur, three deaths have been reported, all due to sustaining bullet injuries. In Rampur, one man lost his life after he was shot by the police and in Firozabad, two men died due to bullet wounds. Two men also passed away in Sambhal after being shot by the police and in Bijnor, two young men lost their lives for the same reason. Lucknow, Muzzaffarnagar and Varanasi saw one death each, but this is what the police had to say about its actions. “All the deaths took place in cross-firing and this would become clear in the post-mortem examination. We are clear and transparent on this. If anyone died due to our firing, we will conduct a judicial inquiry and take action. But nothing happened from our side,” said DGP Mr. OP Singh. It was only in the case of Suleiman from Bijnor, the police has accepted that the firing happened in ‘self-defence’.

REPRESSION OF ACTIVISTS AND PROTESTORS: ARBITRARY DETENTIONS, ARRESTS AND TORTURE

Clamping down on peaceful protesters against the CAA, the UP police has arbitrarily arresting human rights defenders (HRDs), political activists, journalists, lawyers and others, without any evidence or without following the due process of law across the state. Several vocal critics of the CAA, have been detained, on clearly trumped up charges and in a manner replete with procedural violations. There are also instances of torture in custody. For a long duration, the family members of those arrested / detained were not informed about their whereabouts or about the charges under which they had been arrested or detained. All this amounts to brutal crackdown negating fundamental rights under the Indian Constitution.

The protestors and activists have been charged under serious offences ranging from being party to a criminal conspiracy to rioting, from intentional insult to provoke breach of peace to criminal intimidation and from assaulting a public servant when suppressing a riot to mischief by fire or an explosive substance.

Even media persons like Omar Rashid, a journalist with The Hindu and Alimullah Khan, the editor of Qaumi Raftar just go to show that the state will go to any extent to suppress the real picture of the matter from being privy to the public.

The police also rounded up peaceful protestors, saying that they would be detained under Section 151 of the IPC and bailed out the next day. However, they were charged under more serious offences and were later sent to Chowkaghat District Jail. Among those arrested were students and activists, even senior citizens who had been subject to custody for more than 12 days without any explanation. 

On the evening of December 18 at around 8:00 pm, democratic rights activists Arundhati Dhuru, Madhvi Kuckreja and Meera Sanghamitra went to the Hazratganj police station to enquire about the whereabouts of Adv. Shoaib, SR Darapuri, Sadaf Jafar and others who were arrested earlier in the day. In a short while, another policeman Mr. Dhirendra Kushwah who identified himself as the incharge of the thana as well as two other policemen straight away started very rudely and baselessly accusing Arundhati, Madhvi and Meera of instigating and being responsible for the ‘incidents of violence’ at Parivartan Chowk on December 19. Mr. Kushwah particularly kept asking-alleging: “Ab poora shahar jalakar kaisa lag raha hai madam”? (How are you feeling after burning down the city?) Within a few minutes, a large number of police men surrounded the three women.

The police misbehaved with the three women and detained them, in a completely unlawful, and unreasonable and arbitrary manner. The state cannot deny any citizen the fundamental right to peaceful association, expression and life under Article 21 of the Constitution.

RECOVERY OF PROPERTY FROM ‘RIOTERS’: WHAT LIES BENEATH

On December 19, the Chief Minister, Yogi Adityanath issued an open warning that those involved in the violence will have to pay for the damage to public properties. He declared that the state will attach the properties of such persons, based on face-identification through the video footage. Subsequent to the CM’s statement, Lucknow’s district magistrate Abhishek Prakash set up a four-member committee of ADMs to assess damage to public and private property during the violence in anti-CAA protests. This committee was to arrest alleged rioters through CCTV footage and video, impose a find on them and confiscate their properties in case they failed to do so. While on the face of it, this seems to be in ‘public interest’, there are widespread concerns that this is being used in an extensive and targeted manner to seal hundreds of shops / establishments owned by the Muslims, alleging that they were the ‘rioters’ who had engaged in violence.

It cannot be missed that neither the Chief Minister nor the officials have uttered a word as to how those hundreds of muslims whose properties, houses, shops, vehicles, lives have been damaged during the police violence would be ‘compenasted’! The ‘political economy’ of police violence is an entire unwritten chapter in Uttar Pradesh.

MUSLIMS TARGETED

All the 18 people who have died so far in police firing happen to be Muslims. In addition to these tragic deaths, a whole range of incidents including mass FIRs, arbitrary detentions, custodial torture, police forces barging into homes and destroying properties of Muslims, vandalizing vehicles, intimidation and violence on youth, women, children and elders, midnight raids by police, ‘confiscation’ of property, discrimination and harassment based on religious lines have been surfacing to an extent in the mainstream media, but extensively over social media.

Distrubing stories of police violence have emerged from Muftiganj and Hussainabad where houses have been vandalized. In one of the videos shot clandestinely from the terrace of a house with a mobile phone on December 21st, nearly a hundred police personnel can be seen breaking open the shutter of shops and damaging parked vehicles in Begumganj area. Atrocious instances of police beating up pregnant women, forcing them to open up their veils, stealing their jewellery have been reported, but people are scared to complain.

In Rampur, Farooq Rahmani, a known Muslim face in Rampur and office-bearer of Ittehad Naujawan Committee was arrested and charged with IPC section 147 (rioting) and 307 (Attempt to murder) when he was trying to placate some Muslim youth in Gher Mohella in old city area. Multiple instances of Muslims being terrorized and traumatized by police violence have emerged. The homes of many muslim families in Nehtaur, Bijnore have been ransacked by the police and due to fear many of them have left their homes and fled.

Women have been beaten up by male police and all the house hold belongings have been broken up. Some women also narrated police threats like: “They said we will set the house on fire, and if you make too much noise, izzat utar denge,” “We will dishonour you” – a threat of sexual assault and rape’. Harrowing accounts of children being beaten up by the police have been reported – “They beat us a lot,” he said, using lathis. “They beat us in the street. They beat us in the vans. Then they beat us when we were inside.

Muzzaffarnagar too has reported grim reports of violence with police detaining and torturing children, barging into homes and madrasas, attacking Muslim bastis, sealing hundreds of shops owned by Muslims in a bid to instill fear among the members of the community.

NAPM DEMANDS

NAPM demands that UP CM Adityanath take moral and legal legal responsibility for failing to control the unfortunate and unforgivable violence and deaths of 20 people and immediately step down. The High Court must take suo-moto cognizance of all deaths and injuries and the National Human Rights Commission must pro-actively intervene in the situation. It also demands that the National Commission of Women, National Minorities Commission and National Commission for Protection of Child Rights must visit the affected areas and the state government must uphold the people’s constitutional right to hold peaceful protests. The Govt. of UP and UP police must end the pervasive culture of mass and arbitrary filing of FIRs with thousands of ‘unnamed persons and halt the questionable and vindictive action of seizing the properties of alleged ‘rioters’.