NEW DELHI – After spending several anxious days in prison, Natasha Narwal, a student activist accused of riots by the New Delhi police, thought her ordeal was coming to an end.
A judge ruled that Ms. Narwal had been exercising her democratic rights when she participated in protests earlier this year against a divisive citizenship law that incited unrest across India.
But shortly after the judge approved Ms. Narwal’s release in late May, the police announced new charges: murder, terrorism and organizing protests that instigated deadly religious violence in the Indian capital. Ms. Narwal, 32, who said she is innocent, was returned to her cell.
“I wanted to cry,” said her roommate, Vikramaditya Sahai. “We are distressed by the country we grew up in.”
As India struggles to quell growing coronavirus infections, lawyers accuse authorities of taking advantage of the pandemic as an opportunity to rally government critics protesting what they see as fierce and anti-minority policies under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
In the past few weeks, Ms. Narwal and almost a dozen other prominent activists, along with potentially dozens of other protesters, although police records are unclear, have been detained. They are detained under strict sedition and anti-terrorism laws that have been used to criminalize everything from major protests to posting political messages on social media.
India’s coronavirus restrictions, some of which are still in place, have blocked roads to justice, say lawyers and rights activists. With the courts closed for weeks, attorneys have struggled to file bail requests, and meeting privately with prisoners has been nearly impossible.
Law enforcement officials in New Delhi, who are under the direct control of the Indian Home Office, have denied any wrongdoing. But human rights groups say the arrests have been arbitrary, based on scant evidence and in line with a broader deterioration of freedom of expression in India.
In a lengthy report released this month, the Delhi Minority Commission, a government agency, accused police and politicians of Mr. Modi’s party of inciting brutal attacks on protesters and supporting a “pogrom” against minority Muslims.
Meenakshi Ganguly, director of Human Rights Watch for South Asia, said that the cases against the activists appeared to be “politically motivated” and that the police have devised a formula to keep people like Ms. Narwal in jail: when a judge orders the release of prisoner for lack of evidence, new charges are filed.
“The urgency to arrest rights activists and an obvious reluctance to act against the violent actions of government supporters show a complete collapse of the rule of law,” he said.
Before the pandemic hit, Modi was in the midst of the biggest challenge to his power since he became prime minister in 2014. After Parliament passed a law last year that made it easier for non-Muslim immigrants to become Indian citizens Millions protested across the country.
For critics, the citizenship law was more evidence that Mr. Modi’s Hindu nationalist government planned to strip Muslims of the country of their rights.
Tensions peaked in February when sectarian violence and riots erupted in New Delhi. The vast majority of those killed, wounded, or displaced were Muslim, and the police were involved in many of those cases.
After Modi announced a national shutdown in late March to contain the coronavirus, shutting down businesses and ordering the 1.3 billion Indians inside, the protests broke up. Lawyers said police then moved to arrest protesters while sidestepping complaints against government allies.
Among the detainees is a youth activist who raised awareness of police brutality against Muslims; an academic who delivered a speech against the citizenship law; and Ms Narwal, a graduate student who co-founded Pinjra Tod, or Break the Cage, a women’s collective that organized some of the largest protests.
Nitika Khaitan, a criminal lawyer, said the crackdown has also gone beyond high-profile criticism to include ordinary residents living in distressed neighborhoods. She recently questioned those arrests in a jointly signed letter to the Delhi High Court.
Lawyers have tracked a few dozen such arrests under the shutdown, though Khaitan said the true figure could not be verified because police reports have not been released. Many arrests “did not comply with constitutional mandates,” he said.
In a recent interview, Sachidanand Shrivastava, the police chief in New Delhi, said his officers were conducting fair investigations.
In May, authorities said they had detained some 1,300 people for participating in the protests and riots, including an equal number of Hindus and Muslims. Police recently arrested a group of Hindus for forcing nine Muslim men to sing “Hail Lord Ram,” a reference to a Hindu god, before killing them and throwing their bodies down a drain.
“It is very important that the police force remain impartial,” said Shrivastava. “And we are following this principle from day 1.”
But members of the Indian judiciary have questioned the official numbers, accusing police of withholding information about the arrests under national security protections and singling out Muslims for many of the most severe charges.
In the procedural notes reviewed by The Times, a judge who heard a case against a Muslim protester wrote that the police appeared to be targeting only “one extreme” without probing the “rival faction.” During the riots, the police were accused of inciting Hindus and, in some cases, of torturing Muslims.
Khalid Saifi, a member of United Against Hate, a group that works with hate crime victims, was arrested after he tried to mediate between police and protesters, according to his lawyers.
Police accused him of being a “key conspirator” of the riots. His wife, Nargis Saifi, said he was tortured in custody.
“His only crime is that he is a Muslim,” he said.
MS Randhawa, a police spokesperson, denied that Mr. Saifi had been tortured, adding that he has regular opportunities to speak to a judge if abuse occurs.
“These are just accusations,” said Randhawa. “He would have told the magistrate if he had been tortured.”
But rights defenders accuse the Modi government of protecting party officials and, in general, Hindus involved in the violence.
Ms. Narwal, detained in May, could face at least several years in prison for helping organize protests that blocked a busy road in northeast Delhi, where the bloodiest February battles between Hindus and Muslims broke out.
Police accused her of playing a leading role in the riots, charging her with murder, attempted murder, and being part of a “criminal conspiracy.”
At the same time, the police have been accused of ignoring complaints against Kapil Mishra, a local politician from Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party who delivered a forceful speech threatening to forcibly expel Ms. Narwal and other protesters if authorities were not taking action.
Hours after the ultimatum, the streets exploded. But no charges were ever filed against Mr. Mishra, who has denied a role in starting the riots.
A New Delhi police superintendent, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said some officers had wanted to act against Mr. Mishra, but were pressured by the force leadership not to touch “the government warriors”.
“We didn’t even try,” said the superintendent. “The instructions were clear: don’t put your hands on it.”
Through an intermediary, Mr. Mishra declined to comment.
Ms. Narwal’s father, Mahavir Narwal, said the government was bringing India closer to authoritarianism and demonizing anyone who questioned its policies.
For weeks, prison officials ignored his calls and emails to the Tihar prison, where Ms. Narwal is being held. With coronavirus restrictions in place, she was transferred to an isolation room at one point, where she remained for 17 days, said Mr. Narwal, a retired scientist.
Lately, communication has softened. But Mr. Narwal said the subtext of his daughter’s arrest seemed clear: “If you protest, you will be called a terrorist.”
“All he did was fight to keep the soul of India alive,” he said.
Karan Deep Singh contributed reporting.
