The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill was passed in the Parliament on the 11th of December, 2019 – an event that caused an angry uproar in the nation, triggering country-wide protests, some of which are still ongoing.

Starting with Assam, every Indian state burst in rebellion but protestors in Uttar Pradesh, governed by Yogi Adityanath, were subjected to such repression that their tales of ‘police atrocities’ moved the Indian National Congress to summon the National Human Rights Commission.

In Uttar Pradesh, the Human Rights Law Network (HRLN) with its Allahabad unit has been fighting for the victims of police brutality in Uttar Pradesh since December when anti-CAA protests were at their peak.

Five petitions have been filed by the team of HRLN lawyers and human rights experts – three of which are for bringing justice to the commoners who were attacked during the UP police’s crackdown on protests and two are exclusively for the students of Aligarh Muslim University (AMU).

The petitions filed in the Allahabad High Court over the incidents of violence in AMU came after the Supreme Court on December 17, last year, redirected the hearing of 3 writ petitions on the brutality and misuse of power by the armed forces on the students in Jamia Millia Islamia and Aligarh Muslim University, to the respective Chief Justices of relevant High Courts.

‘When the Attorney General, who was appearing on the behalf of the state, claimed that our collected photographic evidence of police brutality is fake, the judge came down heavily on him. He (Judge) also asked for the presentation of the Medicolegal Cases (MLCs) of the armed forces who were said to have been attacked by mobs of protestors’, Fazal Abdali, an advocate working with the Human Rights Law Network said, adding that the Chief Justice of the Allahabad High Court has been responsive and well-informed while hearing the particulars of the various cases.

The most striking question asked by the Chief Justice to the Attorney General was over the asymmetry in the deaths and number of people injured. While over 23 people have died due to bullet shots, there have been no casualties on the side of the armed forces, the Judge had observed.

Since there are several official statements from the Union government and the UP state government accusing the anti-CAA protestors of inciting violence and firing at the police, the heavy disproportion in the casualties or injuries between the two clashing sides makes the official accusations, dubious. ‘Not a single policeman has sustained a grievous injury or is wounded by bullets – which would have been the case had the protestors fired at them,’ Abdali said.

Gory Details Of AMU Crackdown

Two out of the five writ petitions focus on the alleged atrocities on the students of Aligarh Muslim University at the hands of the armed forces. The 62 and 112 pages-long petitions divulge details on the incidents of violence that took place between the 15th and 16th of December 2019.

The Rapid Action Force (RAF) along with the UP state’s police have been accused of provoking students with communal slurs and perpetrating a heavy lathi-charge.

One of the registered petitions lists out the details of 23 people who were reported missing following the on-campus violence.

‘All the missing boys have returned. During the police’s crackdown on the AMU campus, students were randomly picked up and detained for days. We have learnt from the returnees that they were detained in distant stations and released only after sureties were taken from them,’ Abdali informed.

The petition says that 100 students were injured during the on-campus violence, three of whom were in critical condition. The petitioner, who is the former president of the AMU Student Union, also added in his paperwork that two male students had to have their arms amputated due to the ‘deceptive’ shelling and use of grenades on the protesting students by the armed forces.

A statement by the Chief Medical Officer of Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College Hospital, Dr Nisar Ahmed, has been included where he affirms that 60 students were admitted to the facility with cases of trauma and eye injuries caused by tear gas shelling.

The petitions also assert that student-owned two-wheelers parked along the sideways were vandalised and damaged by the RAF and police machinery, and a small state-owned tractor towed away many of the vehicles.

Around 15 students who had hidden, from the chaos, in Guest Houses 1 and 2 were ambushed and brutally lathi-charged. Along with this, another guesthouse and a couple of mosques were raided.

The most staggering claim on the armed forces’ ambushing exercise was of the burning of Room 46 of Morrisson Court (a hostel). The petition stated that the unsuspecting gate guard of the hostel was thrashed by the police who entered Room 46 of the hostel and cut the window fence open. They have been accused of indiscriminately firing tear gas shells, at point-blank range – which is believed to have caused the…