On the evening of 21st January 2022, two police personnel from the Delhi Police Department reached my place (in Mumbai). I had recovered from Covid-19 a few days ago and was asleep when they came. They reached my venue, surprisingly, to interrogate my tweet that went viral on the night of 17th January 2022, passing lakhs of views in a span of a few hours. The tweet was my whistleblowing attitude, exposing a group of young boys passing sexist and communal remarks on Muslim women in a discourse space titled “Muslim Gals are more beautiful than Hindu Gals” on the ClubHouse app. It was an audio chat, and my friends or a few family members did not like this social media activity coming from my end since they ideologically lean towards the current political dispensation. Neither do I care to be not part of the so-called New India crowd.
The interrogation at my place took 5 hours; as part of the so-called legal procedures, I wrote a letter explaining the hate case in the audio chat and submitted a video confessing to this whistleblowing activity. I explained the journalistic activity by referring to the DCW chairperson, Swati Maliwal, tagging the Delhi Police. After that, the Delhi Police took suo moto cognizance and registered FIRs under 153(a), 295(a), and 354(a) of IPC against the accused speakers. On the same day, i.e. 21st January, in the morning, Mumbai Police had already arrested these accused from Haryana as per their investigation approach.
In this matter, many left-liberal media outlets covered the story. I shared my quotes and bytes, too. And there was no prime debate on right-wing news channels like Zee News, Times Now, or Republic TV since the accused did not belong to the “conversational narratives” that the current media ecosystem hunts for. Neither OpIndia wrote any extended features on this issue. This episode was also somewhat linear to the pattern of Sulli deals and Bulli bai cases, where hundreds of Muslim women, including prominent voices in journalism and civil society, found their images and profiles on the site, which invited bids for auctions on the women without their consent.
I honestly shared with the Delhi Police my conversations with Mohammed Zubair of Alt News regarding the ClubHouse hate chat issue. He helped me connect with the Cyber Police HQ in Mumbai.
My cellphone was checked thoroughly by the Delhi Police at my place, and I had nothing to hide since I did not lie. Still, at the end of the interrogation, without any hash value, the Delhi Police seized my cellphone and did not serve me any relevant notices till I insisted anxiously. Section 3(2) of the IT Act, 2000 provides specifics regarding the use of hashing to authenticate electronic records. Before sending electronic evidence for forensic analysis, it is mandated that the hash value be obtained to make sure it has not been tampered with. Like a fingerprint, the hash value is singular. If a document or file is planted on the device, it alters, enabling the owner to determine whether it has been compromised.
After a few days of recovering from the ‘traumatic anxiety’ due to this interrogation, I discussed this episode with a few Mumbai Police personnel and my lawyer, seeking legal guidance on this matter, and they laughed off the attitude of the Delhi Police. Similarly, in the third week of October 2022, in the aftermath of the FIR by BJP’s Amit Malviya in a retracted story, when Delhi Police raided the office of The Wire, they did not generate hash values for the seized cellphones and laptops, as confirmed by their editor Siddharth Varadarajan, co-founder MK Venu and a few others.
And, in the case of CBI raiding Manish Sisodia, the hash value was not generated for the seizures. He commented, “CBI is trying to frame me maliciously, seized the computer without providing Hash Value. I have clear apprehension that the CBI has seized the computer to destroy the confidential documents and implant files in the CPU to falsely implicate me, as my name is not on the CBI charge sheet. In the absence of recording Hash Value during the seizure, the CBI can change the record in the seized CPU as per its convenience to maliciously frame me.” Sisodia underlined that the “integrity of the seized electronic device/digital device is quintessential to establish the case; it is important to ensure the hash value of the data record is taken by the Investigating Officer at the time of seizure.” Sharing the same anxiety, I am unsure of the status of my seized cellphone, if I will be framed for exposing the hate chat, or if my cellphone will be returned safely since the status of the chargesheet, in this case, is not updated to me either.
Twenty months have passed since my matter, and the notoriety of Delhi Police, after reading news reports, scares me more. The cases of communal violence in February 2020, a month before the lockdown, witnessed how the Delhi Police is biased against Muslims. Some findings by the People’s Tribunal, the report that echoes the testimonies of North East Delhi residents, social workers, and lawyers, echoes past reports by the Delhi Minorities Commission and the CPM.
This also included historian Mridula Mukherjee, journalist Pamela Philipose, and former Planning Commission member Syeda Hameed, who stated: “Despite adequate intelligence and warning indicators of heightened tensions and threats, the Delhi police failed to take adequate measures to prevent the spreading of the riots. Once the violence broke out, the Delhi police and acts of omission and commission allowed the riots to continue for longer. Taking no action against the mobs perpetrating the violence and letting victims fend for themselves more often than not resulted in larger casualties, more suffering and harassment, and greater property damages. The police were guilty of misconduct by refusing to arrest and take action against ‘powerful’ people implicated in inciting violence, corruption and attempts at extortion; misusing of technology to frame people, to biased and unjust chargesheets.”
In February 2020, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) said that Delhi Police failed to stop violent attacks against Muslims during the 2020 communal riots.
Last Tuesday, a Delhi Court rapped the Delhi Police for failing to file a supplementary chargesheet in a 2020 North-East Delhi riots case as the investigating officer was “busy in the G20 Summit” held in the national capital on 9–10 September. Regarding this situation, the Delhi High Court stated in June 2021 that the Delhi Police had failed to present any evidence to prove that the accused had committed a terrorism-related offense when it granted bail to campaigners Natasha Narwal, Devangana Kalita, and Asif Iqbal Tanha. The court added “that in its anxiety to suppress dissent and the morbid fear that matters may get out of hand, the State has blurred the line between the constitutionally guaranteed ‘right to protest’ and ‘terrorist activity.’ If such blurring gains traction, democracy would be in peril.”
In a news report (dated 18/9/20) titled “Delhi Police, your bias is showing. Look at your data on the riots investigation — Despite a higher number of riot cases filed against Hindus, the police have charged more Muslims in court”, on The Scroll, by Supriya Sharma, the findings conclude the Islamophobic nature of Delhi Police, “Of the 1,153 accused people against whom charges had been filed in court after the police had completed the investigation, 571 were Hindu and 582 were Muslim. Double the number of riot cases stemmed from Muslim complaints, presumably against Hindus. But six months later, more Muslims stand charged in court by the Delhi police.” It further reads, “Yet the Delhi Police now claims it has no evidence against BJP leaders, even though transcripts of WhatsApp conversations submitted in court show Hindu rioters inspired Kapil Mishra. Ignoring its evidence, the Delhi Police has pinned all the blame for the riots on the people protesting the Citizenship Act. This week, it submitted a 17,000-page chargesheet against 15 people it alleges conspired to overthrow the government by stoking communal violence in the garb of peaceful, democratic protests.”
To fuel the fire, the Supreme Court also pulled up Delhi Police for going soft on the so-called journalist Suresh Chavhanke for not filing the FIR on the chargesheet. For an event in Delhi in December 2021, as per the news report by the Newslaundry, Chavhanke administered an oath at an event organized by members of the Hindu Yuva Vahini to make India a “Hindu nation” and to fight, die, and “kill if required” for the purpose.
He posted the video on Twitter saying, “Lions and Lionesses of Hindu Yuva Vahini taking the oath of Hindu Rashtra with me”. He included Adityanath, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, in his tweet. A PIL charging Chavhanke of employing hate speech was answered by the Delhi police in the Supreme Court a few months later with an affidavit. The police claimed “nothing was said” at the Hindu Yuva Vahini event “, which could create an environment of paranoia amongst any religion”. The police also declared, “We must practice tolerance to the views of others.”
With the publication of this article, I hope that the Delhi Police does not knock on my door again. Instead, it should sensitize itself and become the public guardian for saving democracy rather than fearing the political masters or the present Home Minister.
[This blog was first published on YKA]
