on 13 June 2020 Delhi Police arrested Devangana Kalita and Natasha Narwal from their home, framing them as co-conspirators in the Delhi Riots that left over 50 people dead, rendered hundreds homeless, and destroyed the lives and livelihoods of thousands of (mostly) Muslim working class families. Booked for over a hundred offences ranging from supplying weapons to murder and instigating riots; these women student activists, despite getting bail in three out of four cases, continue to be locked up in Tihar Jail under the Unlawful Activities
(Prevention) Act (UAPA). The sole reason for their incarceration is their participation in the women-led protests in North-East Delhi against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), National Register of Citizens (NRC) and the National Population Register (NPR) – a set of laws and processes which will drastically re-shape Indian citizenship for various minorities and marginalised communities.
The violence in North-East Delhi in February 2020, was the worst the city has experienced since the anti-Sikh riots of 1984. The loss of life and property has been used by the regime to incarcerate, intimidate and victimise protestors and survivors, their families, friends and neighbours. Along with Devangana and Natasha, thousands have been incarcerated on false charges in a riot where they lost their own kin, family and homes. Before the wounds of the violence could begin to heal, and as the country was reeling under the second wave of the Coronavirus pandemic, the
anti-democratic Modi-Shah regime regime initiated the CAA registration process in 13 districts across the five states of Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Haryana and Punjab, bringing to force the very laws and processes that these historic, peaceful protests were speaking out against at hundreds of sites across the country, and indeed, the world.
Families and friends of those arrested, unlawfully detained and even tortured at the hands of the biased police machinery continue to run from pillar to post to meet the needs of their loved ones. Every day, they grapple with the endless delays that pervade the judicial system, collect resources and assurance for bail, fight the whimsies of officers, and hope for a semblance of justice in a system that offers little respite.
Prisons reflect the worst of the power structures of an unequal society. They house a disproportionate share of people from marginalized social locations; are congested and unsanitary; cut people off from their social fabric, and offer little for a life beyond the bare minimum. In the newly found intimacies of the prison, Devangana and Natasha became vectors to raise concern for the violations that make these carceral institutions.
Even the small mercies offered by the system were taken away with the pandemic: stopping of phone calls and meetings with loved ones, restrictions on time spent outside one’s cell or barrack, and halting delivery of letters and other items that loved ones could send to prison.
Responding to these dire conditions, Devangana and Natasha filed a petition in the Delhi High Court holding the State accountable for an explicit lack of intent in responding to the needs arising from the pandemic. With
terribly insufficient health care, no vaccinations and barely any tests, overcrowding, the poorly managed movement of prisoners within the jail, the prisoners’ very right to life was under threat. Seeking infrastructure and provisions to meet the physical and emotional needs of those in prison, the petition also showed that while for the outside world it is important to raise their voices against the incarceration of political prisoners, inside the prison, the distinction between a political prisoner and other prisoners is tenuous. Devangana and Natasha have shared their barracks,
beds and hugs with women and children incarcerated for petty crimes, sometimes not even knowing the charges levied against them. Solidarity and care are central to life in prison and require that we demand equally for the rights of each and every person caught in this unjust system, no matter the accusation against them.