When policemen showed up at his door in a crowded Delhi locality in June, the young man was bathing the body of a dead neighbour. “It’s a r...
When policemen showed up at his door in a crowded Delhi locality in June, the young man was bathing the body of a dead neighbour. “It’s a ritual,” he said. “You wash the body before burying it.”
But the policemen were impatient. They were carrying a notice – they wanted him to appear before the Special Cell within two hours.
At the Lodhi Road police station, the police wasted no time on niceties. “They put my phone records in front of me,” recalled the young man who is preparing for the civil services exam. Among the phone numbers listed in the records were those belonging to student activists, some of whom have been arrested on charges of conspiring to spark violence in Delhi to overthrow the Narendra Modi government.
“They asked me why I had called them,” he said. “I said sir, normally meri baat hui thi. We would speak about regular things. He replied: ‘Bhosdike chutiya samajh ke rakha hai kya humein? Do you think we are idiots?’”
For nine hours that day, and several more over subsequent days, the policemen kept going at him, employing a good cop-bad cop technique – sometimes threatening him, and at other times, plying him with green tea, and once, an omelette....
