Delhi: When her father, Javed Mohammad, a social activist from Prayagraj, called to say the Uttar Pradesh (UP) police had booked him in yet another case while he was also under preventive detention for over a year, Afreen Fatima felt a familiar flash of anger she recalled from her days as a student activist.
But after a year of navigating India’s criminal justice system, the 25-year-old, who is planning to apply for her PhD in linguistics and anthropology, had learnt to choke down the “fury” in the face of injustice, which had fueled her activism and speeches at university.
In a phone conversation on 10 June, a year after her father was arrested in connection with the violence in Prayagraj in 2022, Fatima told Article 14, “I used to feel so angry, furious. I wanted to say or do something immediately, but I’m more patient now. I think I’ve become a lot like my father.”
“It was devastating when my father called to say there is a new case against him, but the thing is that you can’t do anything about it. We thought we should put out that we are being harassed, but there is no point,” she said. “It is what it is. You have to deal with it.”
Mohammad, a lifelong resident of Prayagraj, was remembered as a great believer in India’s justice system by people who knew him, Article 14 reported last year. The 57-year-old pump distributor moved the courts for social justice and human rights issues, with some victories under his belt.
His arrest shocked his friends and colleagues because of his reputation as a meditator whom the administration consulted on issues concerning the Muslim community in the city.
Even as Mohammad worked with the city officials on several issues, including clearing encroachers from the Muslim cemetery and getting the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act 2019 cleared at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic—neither of which made him popular with some members of his community—Mohammad was also critical of the regime in the face of the persecution Muslims were facing since the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party came to power at the centre in 2014 and in UP in 2017.
Of his five children, Fatima was a rising student activist critical of the regime and far more vocal than her father. But after a year of trying to get her father out of jail, she has a different way of thinking about things.
“I would tell my father about his legal activism, ‘Who will know you have filed a petition? You have to create awareness,’” said Fatima. “How I think about social issues and how to address them has changed. I now think of other ways of recourse and redress. I feel like I’m more patient with my emotions now.”
Jailed, House Razed
After protests against the BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma’s comments about the Prophet Mohammad in some cities turned violent last year, the UP police arrested scores of people, including Mohammad, pinning the flare-up in Prayagraj on him and a few other activists who were critical of the government or organised sit-ins against amendments to India’s citizenship law in December 2019.
On 12 June, the day after he was arrested, the house where Mohammad stayed with his wife, his adopted sister, and two daughters was demolished by the city authorities, who said it was an unauthorised construction.
His family said it was razed without due process and challenged the demolition in the Allahabad High Court. The timing suggested this demolition by a JCB bulldozer was yet another instance of the retributive and extrajudicial imposition of the penalties prevalent under chief minister Yogi Adityanath.
In July 2022, Article 14 reported the lack of evidence against the activists called the “masterminds” of the violence in Prayagraj.
A law student named Umar Khalid was accused even though he did a live stream on Facebook from an event he was attending in Azamgarh on the day of the violence in Prayagraj.
In Mohammad’s case, following a meeting with officials, he wrote a Facebook post on 10 June telling people not to take to the streets against the BJP’s spokesperson’s remarks and to stay at home. His family said that CCTV footage shows him on a scooty near his house on the afternoon of the violence.
A day after his house was demolished, an event shown live by some news channels, with breathless coverage by reporters at the scene, the police alleged a 12-bore pistol and 315-bore pistol and bullets were recovered from the rubble. His family said the items removed from the house were broadcast for everyone to see, and the police made no such claim at the time.
Keeping A Man In Jail
Accused in five cases under the Indian Penal Code, 1860, last year, Mohammad was also slapped with a preventive detention order under the National Security Act (NSA), 1980, in July 2022, which he challenged in the Allahabad High Court, and the order is reserved.
Fatima said the state extended the preventive detention order four times for three months, and the order would lapse on 15 July. The NSA allows a person to be detained without a charge for a maximum period of 12 months. They can appeal before an advisory board but without a lawyer.
The BJP government in UP has been frequently accused of misusing the NSA, which allows detention for acts prejudicial to the defence of India, relations with foreign powers, security of India, maintenance of public order, and maintenance of supplies and services essential to the community.
On 11 April 2023, the Supreme Court criticised the UP government, quashed the detention of a Muslim politician under the NSA to allegedly recover revenue dues and said the case indicated why the use of the law had led to allegations of “political vendetta”.
In 2021, a group of retired civil servants demanded an end to UP’s “misuse” of the NSA, which they said was mainly used against Muslims, Dalits and dissidents. That same year, the Indian Express reported how the Allahabad High Court quashed 94 of 120 NSA detention orders over three years to December 2020.
Even if a judge nullifies the NSA order before it lapses, Mohammad may not leave jail because he was booked in three more cases in May 2023, which have to do with the destruction of public property in connection with the June 10 violence.
So far, Mohammad has secured bail in one of those cases in the district court. In two other cases where his bail was rejected, he will move the Allahabad High Court.
It is worth noting that Mohammad was booked in the three cases almost a year after they were registered in June 2022, that too against unknown persons.
In other words, no one was named in the FIRs immediately after the violence, but Mohammad was booked in them almost a year later.
“This shows the state authorities are bent upon keeping him in jail by hook or crook,” said Farman Naqvi, Mohammad’s lawyer in the Allahabad High Court. “He is being victimised by the state.”
A House Destroyed
Fatima now lives with her mother and her younger sister in a rented house not far from her home that was razed on 12 June 2022, shortly after she and her mother were allowed to leave the police station where they were illegally detained following Mohammad’s arrest.
Unsuspecting when the police came knocking on his door on the night of 10 June, given that administrators often called him for mediation, Mohammad left on his own scooter.
In the year since her father was arrested and their house demolished, Fatima lost her aunt, maternal grandmother, and paternal grandfather to old age and sickness.
Speaking to Article 14 a day after her grandfather passed away, and they could not get permission for Mohammad to attend his funeral, Fatima said, “The past year has been very disturbing, trauma filled, grief-filled. We are trying to keep our heads up and not let loss and grief deter us. We are doing it for abu (father), and abu is doing it for us.”
“A lot of things have changed,” she said. “We are trying to survive. We are trying to be brave. We are trying not to let hopelessness overcome us. We are trying not to let the state deter us. We are trying to resist.”
“There are times we do feel overwhelmed,” she said, “but for the sake of each other, we try to keep calm.”
Fatima said she and her siblings still walk past the rubble of their razed house, but the once familiar streets that once led home now feel unfamiliar, and the place they grew up felt different.
“I used to play here, but now it is unreal to imagine that we used to live here,” she said. “We think, ‘ok, it has happened. What can we do?’ Nothing.”
While running from pillar to post trying to get her father out of jail to attend his father’s funeral over the weekend, with no response from the administrators, Fatima said she was thinking about how “dehumanised we have become”.
“This monstrous state has filled everyone with hate,” said Fatima. “They can’t relate to human emotions of loss and grief. Our humanity is being robbed.”
“I feel this dehumanisation at a very personal level. The way abu is made to sit separately in jail as if he is some big criminal, the way the media write about him,” she said. “Many people don’t want to see us or pick up our calls. Lawyers go to great lengths to avoid our calls.”
An Overwhelming Responsibility
Reflecting on whether she was more subdued and not really on social media to avoid aggravating the state and making this worse for herself and her father, Fatima said it may have started like that, but it was no longer the case.
“My mother said we can’t have two people going to jail, but after a month or two
I realised there was no point in keeping quiet. I can keep silent for years, but if they want to charge me with something, they will,” she said. “Keeping silent is what they want us to do. Keeping silent means they win.”
Fatima, who completed her master's in linguistics from JNU, could not take the PhD exam at Aligarh Muslim University last year after her father’s arrest and their home was demolished.
Fatima said she had given a few interviews, contributing to research on the status of minorities and doing her own research on the extrajudicial demolitions under the BJP.
Her father’s legal battles were all-consuming.
“Me staying off social media and not being out there because there is a lot of running from lawyers to the courts,” said Fatima. “The last time I met my father, we spoke about the (women) wrestlers' fight (against sexual harassment), but on most days, I just don’t get time.”
“The urgency of getting abu out is increasing with each passing day,” she said.
The Worst Of The Justice System
From the arrests and detentions of activists and critics in the past few years, Fatima said she knew that process was the punishment in India, but trying to get her father out of jail had made the suffering very real for her family.
“The legal process is so lengthy and slow and overwhelming,” she said.
After the NSA order was issued in July 2022, Fatima said they waited for months before the advisory committee under the Act to decide whether there was sufficient cause for detention before they could challenge the order in the Allahabad High Court in January.
When the matter was listed for months, Fatima said that she wrote to the Chief Justice of the Allahabad High Court thrice for it to be taken up for a hearing.
Fatima said she was only taken up after a separate bench was made for habeas corpus petitions.
“Dates keep coming and going,” she said, “but nothing happens on these dates.”
(Betwa Sharma is managing editor for Article 14.)
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