What Freedom Means For India's Political Prisoners
Maryam was six—the youngest of three siblings—when her father, Khalid Saifi, was arrested following the sectarian violence in northeast Delhi in February 2020. The violence took place against the backdrop of months of protests led by Muslim women at several sites across the national capital and in the country, against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) and the proposed updates to the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and the National Population Register (NPR). Maryam’s mother Nargis recalls the day as the beginning of “a dark, endless night” that has been written into their fates. “Memories of her father have begun to blur in Maryam’s mind,” Nargis says. The child can only remember how he looks through photographs and videos. When Nargis asks her husband, now 45, in Delhi’s Tihar jail to tell her what “freedom” means to him, he says: “The liberty to watch my children grow up.” At his first appearance in court, Saifi was on a wheelchair, with both his legs in bandages. He had been tortured in police custody and has been denied bail so far. FIR 59/2020, in which Saifi is an accused, is based on an alleged “conspiracy” to orchestrate the February 2020 violence at the peak of the women-led protests against the legislations that were criticised as being discriminatory against Muslims. It invokes sections of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), which inverts the judicial principle of “bail is the rule, jail is an exception”. Among Saifi’s seventeen co-accused, only two are Hindus. There were 38 Muslims among the 53 people killed in the violence that raged from February 23 to 26, 2020. Saifi, who was once full of joie de vivre and loved food and travel, now pines only for some time with his family. When he misses his favourite dishes, he asks Nargis to have them—“on my behalf, so I’m content”.
