Free these people
By Justice Markandey Katju
To my Brothers and Sisters Judges of the Supreme Court of India
I respectfully appeal to you to revisit the cases of the people in jail mentioned below whom I believe are innocent and have been wrongly incarcerated due to political vendetta by the Modi Government, quash the bogus charges against them, and free them.
1. Sanjiv Bhatt
He was a senior IPS Police Officer who gave an affidavit in the Supreme Court alleging the complicity of Modi in the 2002 massacre of 2000-3000 Muslims in Gujarat. In the affidavit, he claimed he had attended a meeting at the then-chief minister’s residence in February 2002, at which Modi allegedly told officers to “allow Hindus to vent their anger” against the minority community.
As a result, Modi, who is known to be a very vindictive person, got him arrested on an apparently trumped up false charge of an old case of 1996, and convicted, and he has been in jail since 2018. He has also been sacked from the police and he and his family harassed in many ways.
2. Umar Khalid
He is a Ph.D from JNU, and was an activist. He was arrested on charges of sedition, under the UAPA and a host of other sections of the IPC, which I believe to be totally concocted and bogus, and he has been in jail since 2020. His real crime is being a Muslim. Kanhaiya Kumar, who was accused of similar charges in the same incident in JNU, being a Hindu, is free.
3. Bhima Koregaon accused
All charges against these accused seem bogus, and deserve to be quashed
4. Charges against human rights activists in India should be quashed forthwith
The Modi government often arrests people who criticise it, though criticism of the government is a right of the people in a democracy
5. Prof Saibaba's case needs to be revisited and all charges against him dropped, as he seems to be totally innocent, and the evidence against him manufactured by the police
6. A large number of innocent Muslims are in jail for long periods, on false charges of terrorism, sedition, UAPA, etc. Their only crime was that they are Muslims, whom Modi hates.
They should be freed forthwith.
(Justice Katju is a retired judge of the Supreme Court. These are his personal views.)
