Sanjida Rahman asked the crowd of reporters: “My children keep asking where their father is. What do I tell them?”

Her husband Atiqur Rahman has been in jail for a year now, along with four others who were headed to Hathras in Uttar Pradesh in 2020 when they were arrested.

Sanjida was among the relatives of the two of the five undertrials who addressed a media conference here on Tuesday to mark the first anniversary of their imprisonment. Those in jail include Malayalam journalist Siddique Kappan, Islamist student group Campus Front of India (CFI) leaders Rahman, Rauf Shareef and Masud Ahmed and their driver Alam.

Kappan, a freelancer and the secretary of the Delhi unit of the Kerala Union of Working Journalists, had hitched a ride with Rahman and Ahmed who were on their way to Hathras in Alam’s taxi to express solidarity with the family of a girl who was gang-raped and murdered and her body cremated by police despite objections from her relatives. Shareef, CFI’s national general secretary at the time, was arrested later in Kerala by the Enforcement Directorate.

They have been charged with sedition, incitement and for allegedly raising funds for terrorism under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and are being investigated for money laundering as well. The police have claimed that they were hatching a conspiracy to create communal disharmony in the state.

Rahman was due for treatment at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences here for aortic regurgitation at the time of arrest. Despite an order from the Uttar Pradesh director-general of prisons last week, Rahman is yet to be moved to AIIMS.

“What justice is this? What is this punishment for? Only because we are Muslims, and he spoke out for the rights of others,” Lucknow-based Sanjida, a mother of two, said. Her husband is a PhD scholar at Chaudhary Charan Singh University, Meerut.

Delhi-based Alam’s wife Bushra said: “He is trapped…. He does not know any political person. I just want him to be released.”

L. Hanumanthaiah, Kannada poet and Congress MP, spoke at the media conference. “Sensible Indians must speak now and should not be silent because they are afraid of the administration. If sensible citizens and so-called intellectuals don’t open their mouths, we won’t be living in a democracy. We will go towards becoming a fascist country,” the MP said.

He added: “The (rape and murder) victim’s family can still not live in peace. They are guarded by paramilitary troops who accompany them even to the provision shop. They have requested to be shifted as they can’t live in that village but the government has not done so. They have sold six of their seven buffaloes as they are unable to even venture out to graze them.”

The victim’s family as well as Hanumanthaiah are Dalits. The accused in the case are from the landed Thakur community.

Delhi University professor Apoorvanand said that accusing the Popular Front of India and its mass organisations like the CFI of conspiracy has become a pattern — be it the Delhi riots, the Hathras murder or the recent Darrang killings in Assam.

“No permission is needed to express solidarity with the suffering…. If the PFI or the CFI is not banned, then they have every right to engage in political activity. The times are such that almost every day there is the anniversary of someone who is arrested being marked by a news conference,” the professor said.