Sami Ahmad
NEW DELHI—Malayali journalist Siddique Kappan, who was arrested by UP police for crimes he had never committed, came out of jail after 28 months on Thursday. He was granted bail by the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court.
“I will continue my fight against draconian laws. They kept me in jail even after I got bail. I don’t know who’s benefiting from my being in jail. These two years were very tough, but I was never afraid,” Kappan told media persons as he came out of jail.
It was on 5 October 2020 when Malappuram (Kerala) based journalist was taken into custody by the Uttar Pradesh Police at the Mathura toll Plaza. He was going there to report on the gang rape and subsequent murder of a Dalit woman in Hathras, Uttar Pradesh but the UP police were not ready to even consider him a journalist.
He was contributing to a website called ‘Azimukham’. He was also secretary of the Delhi unit of the Kerala Working Journalist Union.
After twenty-seven months, he is now free from the Lucknow district jail despite all efforts by the Yogi government to keep him incarcerated. He was shifted to Lucknow jail from Mathura on December 21, 2021. He was accused of being attached to the Popular Front of India and causing violence and disruption to law and order.
He was termed a ‘kathit’ or so-called journalist not by the UP’s Yogi regime but also by Hindi media. Immediately after his freedom from jail, he was asked the same nasty question of being ‘kathit patrakar’. He responded very patiently if Press Club of India was ‘Kathit’? “If Kerala Union of Working Journalists was ‘kathit’?” He said that if anyone was against the government, he would be declared ‘kathit’ and a terrorist in the new trend.
Last year in September, Kappan was granted bail by the Supreme Court in an Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) case. Despite this, he remained in custody due to a fresh charge of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) case. He got bail in PMLA case by the Allahabad high court’s Lucknow bench on December 23, 2022, as the court found a ‘lack of evidence’ linking him to an alleged illegal transaction of ₹1.36 crore made by the now-banned group PFI for terrorist purposes.
According to news agency ANI, he said, “I have come out of jail after 28 months. I want to thank the media for supporting me. False allegations were put against me. I am happy to be out now. These two years were very tough, but I was never afraid”
His lawyer Ishan Bahel informed on Wednesday that the sessions court had signed the release orders of Siddique Kappan.
District and sessions judge, Lucknow, Sanjay Shanker Pandey, issued the order for the release of Siddique Kappan. But there was still some apprehension as the court had said that he would be released if he was not wanted in any other offence.
A senior Congress leader expressed his happiness that eventually Article 21 of the Constitution has triumphed and Siddique Kappan, the journalist from Kerala, is free. He said, “Trial Court judges must push back on the demand for judicial custody which is really pre-trial incarceration.”
Senior journalist Rajdeep Sardesai wrote that as charges were unproven, his case would be seen as a textbook example of how draconian laws are often misused to deny personal liberty and create a chilling effect. He termed it tragic.
Noted human rights activist Akar Patel said that it was disappointing how little support he got from the rest of us in the media. When Wagle was attacked in the 90s, was a very different story. He said that we’ve lost something.
Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC), a press group of Indian Muslims in the United States, welcomed Kappan’s release. “IAMC welcomes the release of journalist Siddique Kappan after 28 months of unjust incarceration. We urge the court to release other Muslim youths arrested with Kappan & dismiss this completely bogus case,” the group said in a tweet.
Anirban Blah termed it ‘beyond a lack of support’. He said, “The TV channels actively abetted the witchhunt and were complicit in his incarceration.”
Senior journalist Arfa Khanum Sherwani tweeted that Kappan was imprisoned for a crime he never committed. “His only crime was that he was a journalist and a Muslim.”
One Twitter handle summed up as, “Two Indias.” Maharashtra Congress Se badal wrote, “Arnab Goswami who celebrated the killings of Pulwama martyrs, got bail in 2 days…Meanwhile, Siddique Kappan spent 2 years in jail for cases under the UAPA act, and when he got bail, later charged with money laundering under the PMLA act.”
One Muneer opined, “Who will compensate him? Supreme Court must allow him to sue the government for a few crores for doing the wrong.”
