Amidst the dark shadow of India’s lockdown, the Delhi police – controlled by the Central government – has been busy with tasks entirely unr...
Amidst the dark shadow of India’s lockdown, the Delhi police – controlled by the Central government – has been busy with tasks entirely unrelated to controlling the Covid-19 pandemic. Its schedule is packed with searching homes and offices; confiscating phones and documents; and questioning, detaining, and arresting large numbers of persons.
It is instructive that these arrests are being made when the Supreme Court has directed governments to decongest jails to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
The charges levelled against the arrested persons relate to their alleged role in organising protests against the discriminatory amendments to India’s citizenship law, the proposed National Register of Citizens and National Population Register. They are further accused of instigating and participating in the violent communal carnage that engulfed working-class settlements in Northeast Delhi in February, the gravest Hindu-Muslim conflagration in the capital since Partition riots of 1947.
Home ministry’s orders
This rise in detention and arrests – after a brief respite following the imposition of the lockdown – has reportedly come after Home Ministry’s instructions to the Crime Branch at the end of March.
The Hindu reported that from March 22 to mid-April, around 25 to 30 arrests were made in the violence-affected, Muslim-majority areas of Northeast Delhi. The Indian Express reported a total of 802 arrests, of which at least...
