Around 1 pm on January 30, 2020, Mohammad Vashif, who edits a small weekly newspaper called Swatantra Savera in Kanpur, received a phone ca...
Around 1 pm on January 30, 2020, Mohammad Vashif, who edits a small weekly newspaper called Swatantra Savera in Kanpur, received a phone call from the city’s Anwarganj police station asking him to report there immediately. “There’s an important matter to discuss,” the inspector who called him reportedly said. “Come over and we will talk over a cup of tea.”
Vashif told the inspector he was tied up and would come by the evening. But the calls got relentless, and the 32-year-old thought he might as well go.
When he reached the police station, there was no tea. Instead, Vashif alleged the police detained him and took him around on a long ride across the vast industrial city, the largest in Uttar Pradesh.
The next day, he was formally arrested and jailed on charges of instigating violence in Kanpur during the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act in December 2019. Five other men from the Muslim-majority neighbourhood where he lived were also arrested in the same case. The police claimed they had provoked and participated in the violent protests on December 20 that had led to the death of three Muslim men.
Since early December 2019, when the Modi government had amended India’s citizenship law, introducing a...
