Delhi: When A* has to go to court in connection with a Delhi riots case, the 28-year-old, who earns Rs 5,000 every month packing makeup products in a factory, has to take leave for half a day and sometimes a whole day, losing between Rs 150 to 300 each time.
On the days the hearings are in the afternoon, she rushes home from work, picks up her son, and goes to the district court complex in Karkardooma, around 5.4 km from her house in Junta Colony in northeast Delhi, and takes an auto, which costs her Rs 100.
“At the court, it is very gloomy. I don’t talk to anyone because what’s even there to talk? I wait for the proceedings to begin with my son clutched to me, clock in my attendance,” she said.
The next hearing is on 3 October 2024.
When the Jafrabad police first approached A in November 2020, she had just returned home from work at a factory where she packed wedding cards at the time.
Four policemen came to her house in Junta Colony parallel to the Jafrabad metro station in northeast Delhi, where just a few months earlier, Muslim women of the area led a protest against a controversial citizenship law seen as discriminatory to Muslims.
“They asked me to accompany them to the police station with my Aadhar card. I didn’t know what else to do, so I did,” said A. “They asked me about the protest. I said I’d gone there only once or twice while returning from work.”
“They asked me where I was on the day of the riots. I said I was at work. They asked a few more questions about the protest and let me go, saying nothing would happen,” she said, trying to remember as her two-year-old son interrupted her at every sentence.
Amid the protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) 2019, underway in February 2020, Muslim women and student activists organised a sit-in under the Jafrabad metro station on the night of 22 February and blocked the 66 Foota road to Seelampur.
A kilometer from the protest site at the Jafrabad metro station, Kapil Mishra, a leader of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), addressed a gathering opposing the anti-CAA protests on 23 February and gave the police an ultimatum to clear the roads before former US president Donald Trump, who was on an official visit to India, left.
Otherwise, Mishra said, he and his supporters would take to the streets.
Communal riots erupted in northeast Delhi later that evening.
Of the 53 people killed in the riots, three-quarters were Muslim.
Specious Evidence
By November 2021, the Delhi Police had named 26 people in the first information report 48/2020 of the Jafrabad police station, including 20 women. The accused were Muslim women from low-income neighbourhoods around the metro station and four student activists, Gulfisha Fatima, Natasha Narwal, Devangana Kalita and Safoora Zargar.
Seven Muslim women, including Fatima, were named in the first chargesheet filed in October 2020 and 13 in the second one filed in November 2021.
The women, who were between the ages of 24 and 73 when they were accused, were homemakers, seamstresses, and a domestic worker. They were charged under two bailable provisions of the IPC: Section 147 (rioting) and Section 188 (disobeying an order of a public servant).
In July 2024, Article 14 reported that a secret police informer claimed to have identified 13 accused who were all found randomly walking in the Peeli Mitti ground near the Jafrabad metro station every two to three weeks from 30 October 2020 to 1 January 2021.
The supplementary chargesheet does not mention how the secret informer identified the Muslim women eight months after the protest.
Article 14 spoke to eight women, and all of them claimed that the police forced them to submit their Aadhar Cards and sign a blank paper.
We cannot independently verify this claim.
However, the more or less identical answers the police recorded in response to the questionnaire they gave the women suggest they accused them of a rioting case to pin the Delhi riots on the anti-CAA protests and get statements against the student activists.
This case, which has had 56 hearings overall since the Delhi police filed the chargesheet in October 2020 in the case called the “Jafrabad roadblock case’, is presently at the stage of framing charges, the legal proceedings before a trial.
Advocate Ritesh Dubey, who represents two women from Jafrabad, said that filing cases against these women for transgressing boundaries or norms of society was not a new phenomenon and is similar to “witch-hunts”.
“The allegations are vague. Most of the women have been named only to get statements against other women, and there is no independent evidence to prove their association or presence at the alleged scene of the crime,” said Dubey. “And most importantly, what is the crime, ‘roadblock’?”
Dubey said this case was “not rooted in crime but in the state's power to regulate human behaviour”.
‘My Life Has Turned Upside Down’
A* was not married when the police came to her house for the first time in November 2020. She didn’t think much of the meeting and went on with her life, getting married in May 2021.
A received a court summons in January 2022, informing her that she had missed a hearing in the Delhi riots case.
When A attended her first court hearing in February 2022, she was living with her in-laws and two months pregnant.
From February 2022 to August 2024, A said she had attended 32 hearings.
“My life has turned upside down since I’ve been named in this case,” she said.
While A’s parents support her, her in-laws outright denied helping her or supporting her through this case. “Jo hai jaisa hai, apne aap dekho… hume kuch lena dena nahi hai isse (you have to see for yourself, we don’t have anything to do with this case),” she remembers her mother-in-law telling her.
A moved back into her parents’ house a few lanes away from her in-laws’ house, also in Junta Colony.
Her mother-in-law told her to return only after this case was finished. She gave birth to her son in August 2022 at her parents’ home. While her husband supported her and came to meet her often, she said that he could not speak up in front of his mother about bringing her back to their house.
“My son has attended all the hearings with me since he was two months old. My husband accompanies me now to take care of our child when I’m in the chamber, but never before,” said A*. “I never pushed him because I know it’s my case to deal with.”
In July last year, A, who was nine months pregnant at the time, collapsed in the courtroom.
A applied for an exemption for four months from August to mid-November 2022 when she delivered her son, but she started attending the hearings again in November 2022.
A said her husband’s family disapprove of her for being embroiled in this case.
“They fear that I’ll take their name, and if the police come to their house, it’ll be a matter of utmost shame for them,” she said.
A said she can only return to her husband’s house once relieved of this case. Otherwise, years may pass, but she’d still live at her parents’ house with her son.
“I’m deeply distressed because of this case,” said A. “People who are close to me are also trapped. My life is doomed.”.
‘How Long Will This Go On?’
B*, 40, who has four children—three boys and a girl—was a seamstress but recently lost her job four months ago due to poor health caused by kidney stones. Her husband also lost his job as an auto driver because he couldn’t pay his rent to the auto owner.
“I have tried several times to find work, but no one trusts a woman with a criminal case against her. I try to make them understand that it wouldn’t affect my work, but they don’t believe me,” she said.
B said that most of the time, she doesn’t even have the auto or metro fare to go to court, and a friend, who is also a co-accused, pays for her.
B said she applied for a passport at the suggestion of an aunt who offered her a job as a domestic worker in Saudi Arabia.
B said the passport officer has kept her file pending until the case is resolved.
“How long will this go on,” she said.
‘Very Difficult To Get Her Married’
The youngest accused, C*, was 24 when she received the court summon in February 2021.
C suffers from Tuberculoma - a severe extrapulmonary disease of the brain.
Her mother said that C gets seizures very often due to her condition, and there are many times that she falls on the ground while getting ready to go for the hearing.
“I wish she gets a seizure in the court soon so they know how difficult it is for her to attend these hearings,” C’s mother said.
C’s family hasn’t told anyone about this case yet because they want her to get married, and her prospects will be affected if word goes out that she is embroiled in a case related to the Delhi riots.
Her mother said, “Isko ye case ka daag lagna hi tha” (She had to be stained by this case.)
“We want her to get married, but as this case goes on, it’s getting tough. We got some proposals, but those are from different states. But since this case is going on, we’ll have to get her married somewhere close by so she can attend the court proceeding,” said C’s mother
“It’s a huge struggle. she said. “She’s the oldest, and two of her younger sisters are already married,”
C used to attend the anti-CAA protests with her 93-year-old grandmother, who, she said, the police also detained, but she was excused from the case because of her age.
C said she has been applying for a passport since March this year because she wants to go to Umrah, a pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, but her passport request has been rejected due to this case.
On the impact of this case on the women accused in the Jafrabad roadblock case, C said, “The women have become so scared that they wouldn’t talk to anyone.”
“For once, all these women came out to fight for justice and democratic values, but now they have been pushed back forever,” she said.
*Denotes identity withheld on request
(Poorvi Gupta is an independent journalist based in New Delhi. She covers socio-political issues through a gender lens.)
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