Former AMU student and Muslim activist Usmani kept raising his voice for the rights of Muslims, marginalised communities and contemporary social and political issues on various platforms. He was jailed for dissent, in connection with the anti CAA protests which erupted nationwide earlier this year, and was released on September 1 after a district court granted him bail.
Speaking to the wire, Usmani states that “I don’t see it as a legal victory for myself. Take the example of an innocent man walking on the streets. Somebody comes and puts a knife to his throat. After a while, the knife is removed and the man is asked to celebrate his new found freedom. I can’t. They should apologise for putting a knife to the throat in the first place.”
“Two things about my arrest troubled me the most. First, after they took me, they didn’t inform my family of the charges or my whereabouts for nearly 24 hours. And then to have the ATS (Anti-Terrorism Squad) was also quite shocking.”
“They didn’t ask me anything about the CAA or the AMU violence, their line of questioning was only about terror cases”, Sharjeel told The Hindu. Such arrests, as well as baseless investigations, are being misused to crackdown on political dissent across the nation.
He was arrested from his native, Azamgarh on July 8 this year.
Special judge Narendra Singh also noted Sharjeel’s academia and showed that he was a bright student in the Department of Political Science and had written many articles and opinion pieces as a freelance journalist on various media portals.
Prashant Bhushan, a prominent Civil Rights Lawyer of the Supreme court who was recently in the news, referred to these arrests as malafide, and that the government and police must be made to pay.
"CAA Protest: AMU Student Sharjeel Usmani Gets Bail.
Usmani told The Wire that he doesn't see the order as a legal victory because he should never have been arrested in the first place". The govt and police must be made to pay for such malafide arrests. https://t.co/NSCZeAPPTc— Prashant Bhushan (@pbhushan1) September 3, 2020
“Their arrests seem clearly designed to send a chilling message to India’s vibrant civil society that criticism of government policies will not be tolerated”, says a press statement released by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.