A journalist and three others arrested while on their way to Hathras to meet the family of the brutalised and murdered Dalit teen were on Wednesday booked for sedition by Uttar Pradesh police.
Sidhique Kappan, a Delhi-based journalist, Popular Front of India (PFI) leaders Atiq-ur-Rahman and Mohammad Alam, and student Masood Ahmad have been sent to 14 days’ judicial custody by a Mathura court.
Pratibha Singh, a lawyer representing Kappan in the Mathura court, told The Telegraph over the phone: “All four have now been booked for sedition, besides rioting and using information technology to create unrest. They have been sent to jail for 14 days.”
Wills Mathew, an advocate who moved a habeas corpus petition in the Supreme Court on Tuesday on behalf of a Kerala-based journalists’ union against Kappan’s arrest, told this newspaper that all four had been booked for sedition under IPC Section 124A. The sedition charge entails a maximum punishment of life in jail and a minimum of three years’ imprisonment.
Kappan and the others had initially been held under CrPC Section 151, which provides for preventive detention. The section says “a police officer knowing of a design to commit any cognisable offence may arrest, without orders from a magistrate and without a warrant, the person so designing, if it appears to such officer that the commission of the offence cannot be otherwise prevented”.
However, on Wednesday morning a sub-inspector, Prabal Pratap Singh, filed a new complaint under the sedition law against all four with Manth police station in Mathura. Bhim Singh Jawala, the officer in charge of the police station, was made the inquiry officer.
Sources said the complainant had stated that an “objectionable” pamphlet had been seized from the arrested persons. Officer Singh was quoted as saying that the pamphlet was on the Hathras victim and had the title “Main Bharat ki beti nahin hun (I am not the daughter of India)”.
At Kappan’s home in Kerala’s Malappuram district, his wife Raihanath said he was a “soft-spoken” and “mild-mannered” man with no links to any political outfit.
Uttar Pradesh police maintain that Kappan is associated with the PFI, a controversial Muslim Right-wing outfit on whom the state government had earlier sought a ban. The PFI, however, has said Kappan is not a member.
The Yogi Adityanath government has of late taken a liking to the sedition charge. Earlier this year, it had booked many anti-CAA protesters for sedition. Although the charge failed to hold in court in most cases, the BJP government did score political points by portraying those raising their voice as enemies of the State.
PFI general secretary Anis Ahmed said in a statement on Wednesday: “The new rounds of allegations against the Popular Front are nothing but an attempt by the Uttar Pradesh government to divert attention from its failure to handle the Hathras rape case. UP under Yogi has become a jungle raj where law and order has completely collapsed.”
