Two student leaders from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam, have been languishing in jail for half a decade for the ‘crime’ of fighting against the unjust provisions of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). We demand their immediate release!
The discriminatory CAA excludes Muslim migrants from eligibility for citizenship. It provoked widespread protest all over India when it was brought by the Modi government in 2020, starting with a sit-in organised by local Muslim women in the Shaheen Bhag area in southeast Delhi on 15 December.
Student activists repressed
Subsequently, the protest developed into an all-India Movement. The Modi government was unable to legally prevent the solidarity movement from spreading and so unleashed oppression against the students, activists and women struggling against the CAA.
BJP leaders, including Vice President of the Delhi BJP Kapil Mishra and now-Union Minister Anurag Thakur, incited riots through hate speeches. They called the protestors traitors and asked the police to forcefully vacate CAA protest sites.
These communal speeches led to stone pelting and large-scale violence in northeast Delhi. Nearly 53 people, both Hindus and Muslims, were killed; hundreds were injured; and properties and religious buildings including mosques and temples were demolished.
Most of the riots took place from 23 to 26 February 2020. The majority of the casualties were Muslims.
The Delhi Police, which was supposed to contain the violence and maintain law and order, failed to protect the masses and stop the riots. Indeed, videos showed the police being aloof and even complicit with the right-wing Hindutva rioters.
It is also to be noted that Delhi High Court judge, Justice Muralidhar showed some spine by pulling up the Delhi Police for not registering a First Information Report (FIR) against hate speeches made by BJP leaders like Mishra and Thakur.
Modi’s central government retaliated to this modicum of integrity by transferring Muralidhar to another High Court on 26 February 2020, the same day he passed the order.
Arrest of student leaders and fallacy of ‘rule of law’
The Modi government arrested 2,000 people in the wake of the deadly riots, but the main culprits responsible for inciting the bloodshed were not amongst them.
In the main conspiracy case, the police arrested student leaders Umar Khalid, Sharjeel Imam, and 16 other students for inciting riots, using the draconian provisions of Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), under which granting bail is not mandatory.
This law has been used by the Modi regime and state governments to suppress protesters, who fight for the rights of people. One can be branded as a terrorist through the UAPA, thrown in jail, and the key tossed away.
Six of the student leaders and activists have been released over the years, the rest have been languishing in jail for the past five years without trial.
Only on 5 January this year the supreme court heard their bail applications and granted bail to five of them. But bail was denied to Khalid and Imam, who have been branded as main conspirators who played lead roles in the riots.
The judiciary has stooped so low as to claim that Khalid and Imam have to wait one more year to hear their bail plea.
The persecution of these activists and students shows the fallacy of the so-called ‘rule of law’. Rather than upholding the legal rights of the people of India, the ‘independent’ judiciary has been toeing the line of the Modi regime.
This fact has been exposed by the cases of Khalid, Imam and the others unjustly detained in 2020. But these are not the only examples.
Modi’s lawfare
For instance, the judgement delivered on the Ayodhya case in 2020 facilitated the construction of the Ram Mandir Temple on the former site of the Babri Masjid mosque, which was destroyed by a Hindu mob in 1992, triggering riots that left 2,000 dead.
This blatant provocation reveals how the courts, far from impartial, are subservient to Modi’s Hindutva agenda.
Despite the sermons we hear about the rule-of-law in ‘Constitutional’ India, it seems that legal rights and protections are selectively applied at the whim of the right-wing Modi regime, favouring allies and toadies.
We note that when the rabid Hindutva journalist Arnab Goswai was arrested in 2018, after being named in the suicide note of interior designer Anvay Naik, who killed himself after non-payment of dues, Goswai’s bail application was heard and granted on the same day.
By contrast, the bail applications of students, activists, Dalits, Muslims and dissenters are never heard in a timely fashion, meaning these individuals are kept languishing in prison for many years.
For instance, Father Stan Swamy and G.N. Saibaba fought for the constitutional rights of tribal peoples and against their exploitation by multinational corporations in mining rich areas like Jharkhand.
Following a violent case of stone pelting in Bhima Koregaon that left two dead, the government cooked up a ‘Maoist conspiracy’ as being responsible.
Swamy and Saibaba were implicated on false charges and jailed. Swamy, a Jesuit priest, died in judicial custody in 2021 in deplorable conditions. Meanwhile, the severely physically disabled Saibaba suffered a long incarceration in jail and died soon after his release.
Other activists, falsely implicated over the Bhima Koregaon case, are still in jail or under house arrest. Those who have been released have revealed the terrible condition of jails in India and said the majority of people incarcerated are from oppressed castes , Muslims and the poor.
One of these, Rona Wilson, was released on bail and commented on the deplorable conditions in jail by quoting Russian author Fydor Dostoevsky: “to know the development of society one has to visit its jails”.
The state, of which the courts are a part, exists to oppress the working class and enforce the rule of the capitalists.
The fallacy of India’s ‘rule of law’ can be seen in the cases described here. Internationally, the fiction that democratic societies are governed by a ‘rules-based order’ has been demolished by Donald Trump’s naked act of imperialist aggression against Venezuela, and his subsequent threats to Colombia, Mexico and Cuba.
The democratic mask has fallen, exposing the ugly face of capitalist rule.
The way forward
The Modi regime has brought nothing but disaster over the last 12 years.
Unemployment and income inequality have been increasing. It has embraced privatisation in all spheres and handed all resources to multinational corporations, while oppressing students and people who protest against the government’s looting and communal policies.
Umar Khalid, Sharjeel Imam and other activists across India have been booked under draconian laws like UAPA only to stifle dissent. They are in jail for the crime of opposing Modi’s attacks on elementary democratic rights.
The courts are a brutal tool of the Indian capitalist state, used to preserve the rule of the rich, and attack working people standing up for their interests.
We condemn the actions of the Modi government and call for the immediate release of Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam and all political prisoners!
Repeal the UAPA and all other draconian laws!
