UP Cops Thrash Former Teacher After CAA Protest In Lucknow, Says Lawyer // ‘Detained in police facility, I heard screams all night… It was horrific’
Sadaf Jafar, a former
teacher, who is a prominent human rights activist in Lucknow, was arrested and
beaten by the Uttar Pradesh Police after the protest against the
Citizenship Amendment Act on 19 December turned violent, her lawyer and
family allege. Jafar was making
videos of the protest and posting them on Facebook.
In her final video,
Jafar can be heard telling a woman constable, “Why are you arresting me? I was
protesting peacefully. You could not arrest the people who were pelting
stones?” Speaking with HuffPost
India on Sunday, Pradeep Singh, her lawyer, said that he met with
Jafar for the first time earlier that day. Singh said that Jafar
had bruises on her eyes, neck, back and the lower part of her body. “Male police officers
have beaten her. They have beaten her badly. They have clawed at her hair,”
said Singh. “She was beaten at the
scene of the protest where she was doing a Facebook Live,” he said. “But they
also beat her while she was in the lockup. They have hit her with
batons.”
Singh said that Jafar
told him that policemen had kicked her in the stomach. Her family and friends
say they did not know where Jafar was being held after she was arrested on 19
December for almost two days. The UP Police, they say, did not give them any
details about her whereabouts. They finally managed to locate her at the
Hazratganj police station....
read more:
“There were more than
50,000 people protesting. Initially it was peaceful but soon more crowds began
to gather near Meenakshi Chowk. After a few hours, stone-pelting began and we
had to resort to lathicharge and teargas shelling to contain them. Not a single
round was fired from the police side. In fact, we have recovered empty shells
of various ammunition from the side of the protesters,” claimed Satpal Antil,
SP City, Muzaffarnagar.
Residents claim what
followed barely six hours later was a police crackdown in the locality, with
personnel entering the lanes of Khalapar and destroying private property with
hammers and lathis. Residents, most of whom wished to remain anonymous, claimed
more than 80 policemen, both in uniform and civil clothes, barged into homes,
broke windows and destroyed items. Haji Anwarilahi, 74,
claimed that on Friday night, he was detained by policemen after they smashed
his vehicle and entered his home. “I can barely even walk. I could hear sticks
banging and breaking things. They even broke a fridge which was supposed to be
gifted during a wedding. I was detained in a ‘police facility’, and I heard screams
from different rooms all night. It was horrific,” Haji, who claims he was
released Sunday morning, told The Indian Express. Many residents from Khalapar
claimed they hid in corners of their own homes as policemen roamed around for
almost two hours on Friday night. Some claimed they hid on terraces when they
saw policemen breaking streetlights and CCTV cameras placed outside their
homes.
https://indianexpress.com/article/india/caa-protests-detained-in-police-facility-i-heard-screams-all-night-it-was-horrific-6180163/see also
