A Human Rights Victory in India, but with Great Difficulty

Swaminathan S. Anklesaria AiyarIf you are a Muslim in India participating in a student agitation, you can be locked up for years without being convicted. Sharjeel Imam and seven other students were arrested in 2019 under anti ‐​terrorism laws for supposed violence in an agitation against a new citizenship law discriminating against Muslims. After almost four years of incarceration, they have been discharged at a pre ‐​trial stage by the Delhi High Court. The judge castigated the police chargesheets saying “prosecutions cannot be launched on the basis of conjectures and surmises and chargesheets cannot be filed on the basis of probabilities.”Since the court had not been impressed by two earlier chargesheets, the prosecution had filed a third. The Court remarked, “The investigative agency has not adduced fresh evidence; rather has sought to present the same old facts in the garb of further investigation.” It cautioned that the filing of a “slew of chargesheets must cease, else this juggernaut reflects something beyond mere prosecution and would have th e effect of trampling the rights of accused persons”.The court noted that none of the witnesses had actually seen the students break the police barricades during the agitation. No eyewitnesses saw the accused committing violence. A test identification parade of witnesses was not carried out until the third supplementary chargesheet. Two independent witnesses recorded their stateme...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs