Fri 08 May 2020:
Safoora Zargar is a 27-year-old M.Phil student and activist at the Jamia Milia Islamia university in New Delhi, who was recently booked and imprisoned under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act. This is a law that gives the government liberty to jail any individual with suspected terror links. However, there has been rising uncertainty over the Government’s use of the UAPA act, with the arrests of student activists like Zargar who protested against the anti muslim NRC-CAA legislation.
Amid the outrage at Zargar’s arrest and subsequent imprisonment at Tihar jail, news broke that she was three months pregnant. Many human rights activists rally for her release on humanitarian grounds, which then gained national and international attention.
Justice Markandey Katju is a former Supreme Court judge and well-known for being outspoken, this time he question the indian democracy and tweeted
This is symbolic of the total collapse of democracy & state institutions in the country and reminds us of the notorious Dreyfus case of the 19th century in France, for which the famous writer Emile Zola uttered the word which is the title of this post.
Safoora Zargar’s case is symbolic of the total collapse of democracy and state institutions in the country. pic.twitter.com/bVrgy0COjp
— Markandey Katju (@mkatju) May 7, 2020
A woman whose only ‘crime’, ( if it can be so-called ), is of protesting against the Citizenship Amendment Act, has been falsely accused of instigating riots in North East Delhi, by manufacturing false evidence against her by the police.
False evidence used to be often fabricated earlier too by the police to arrest and chargesheet innocent people, but now it is being done on a much larger scale. The Delhi police, like the police in many states, has become a ‘caged parrot’, ( to use the expression coined by former CJI Lodha for the CBI ), but is the judiciary, which was supposed to be custodian of the Constitution and guardian of the rights of the people, performing any better?
The arrest of several Muslim activists behind anti-citizenship law protests in India has caused an outrage, with writers, academics, lawyers and filmmakers calling it “unending witch-hunt” of protesters.
The passage of the law last December sparked nationwide protests largely led by Muslim women. Protesters and activists say the CAA coupled with a national citizenship register will lead to the disenfranchisement of millions of Muslims.
The United Nations special rapporteur on minorities has called the new citizenship law “fundamentally discriminatory” towards Muslims and other minorities.
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