AGENCIES / WEB DESK
A Delhi-based journalist working with Malayalam news outlets and three others were booked on Wednesday under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and charged with sedition for their alleged links with the Popular Front of India (PFI) and its students’ organisation Campus Front of India (CFI).
They were detained by Uttar Pradesh Police on Monday afternoon from a toll plaza in Mathura while they were on their way to Hathras to meet the kin of the deceased Dalit woman who was brutally assaulted and allegedly gangraped by four upper-caste men last month.
Journalist Siddique Kappan was going to Hathras on Monday to cover the situation following the alleged gang rape and death of the 20-year-old woman from Scheduled Castes, which has triggered outrage across the country.
Mr Kappan, a contributor for a popular Kerala-based website, is also the secretary of the Delhi unit of Kerala Union of Working Journalists.
In a statement on Tuesday, the police said they had received information that some “suspicious people” were on their way to Hathras from Delhi. Following the tip-off, the men – Siddique Kappan, Atiq-ur Rehman, Masood Ahmed and Alam – were stopped at a toll gate in Mathura and later arrested.
Their mobile phones, a laptop and some literature they carried, were seized, the statement said.
The police claimed that the men, during questioning, revealed they had links with the PFI and its associate organisation Campus Front of India (CFI). The FIR said a pamphlet titled “I am not India’s daughter” was recovered from them.
The police handling of the Hathras woman’s case — the alleged laxity followed by whisking off the body from the Delhi hospital and the subsequent 2 am cremation, keeping her family locked up, has drawn condemnation from the opposition and the civil society. Their treatment of journalists and political leaders who had tried to visit Hathras, has drawn criticism as well.
Leaders of several political parties – including the Congress and the Samajwadi Party – have been detained. Batons were used on protesting workers of the Rashtriya Lok Dal. Among the detained leaders were Congress’s Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra who had a face-off with the police last week when they were on way to Hathras to visit the woman’s family.
Meanwhile, the Delhi unit of KUWJ has written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Kappan’s detention. “We have filed a habeas corpus petition in the Supreme Court against the illegal detention of a journalist who was doing his job… The Constitution of our country protects the freedom of press. Kappan’s arrest is a breach of Constitutional values,” the Delhi unit of the Union said.
The letter to the UP CM, signed by KUWJ president Miji Jose, said, “He is the secretary of KUWJ… and had gone to Hathras Monday morning to cover the present situation in the area… We understand that he was taken into police custody by UP Police from Hathras toll plaza. Our efforts and the efforts by some advocates based in Delhi to contact him were not successful.”
The Press Club of India too released a statement saying that Kappan should be “released without delay”. “It is our apprehension that the Yogi Adityanath government, in line with its clearly stated conspiracy theory as explanation for the tragic Hathras incident, will employ diversionary tactics to take the focus away from the many suspicious, possibly criminal actions of its police and administration and the virtual silence of the political leadership on the Hathras tragedy,” it said.