Last week, Atikur Rahman walked out of the Lucknow jail, shouting “Inquilab zindabad”.
The daunting 32 months in prison had failed to break his spirit. “They tried all methods to break me but they failed. I am not afraid of anything,” said the 29-year-old from Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh, who was a member of the now-banned Campus Front of India. “What more can they do now? When they put you in jail, the fear vanishes.”
In October 2020, the Uttar Pradesh police arrested Rahman and two of his friends – journalist Siddique Kappan and a student Masood Ahmad – on the way to Hathras. While Kappan was on his way to cover the alleged gang-rape and assault of a 19-year-old Dalit woman, Rahman and Ahmad were accompanying him to “show solidarity” with the family. Even Mohammad Alam, who was driving the taxi, was arrested.
The four men were charged under the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, as well as sections of the Indian Penal Code related to sedition, promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, and deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings.
The police accused them of conspiring to disturb public harmony and alleged to have seized incriminating material, including pamphlets on rioting.
Though the arrests of the journalists and activists drew a wave of condemnation, it has taken nearly three years for them to get bail. Alam spent 27 months in jail, and Kappan was released after spending 28 months in prison. Masood Ahmad is yet to get bail.
Rahman denied that he was part of any conspiracy and alleged that he and his friends were targeted for their Muslim identity.
He pointed out that among those who reached Hathras at the time to protest against the crime were Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, Rashtriya Lok Dal leader Jayant Chaudhary and Bhim Army’s Chandrashekhar Ravan. While Gandhi and Chaudhary were either roughed up or baton-charged by the police, Ravan was detained by the police.
“My friends and I were jailed for more than two years for our attempt to show solidarity with the victim’s family,” Rahman said. “We were punished because we were Muslim. They were let go because they were Hindu.”
Behind bars, a health scare
Rahman, who suffers from a chronic heart condition called aortic regurgitation, had a “very difficult” time in jail.
In January 2021, for instance, he and other inmates were punished with a day’s solitary confinement after they complained about the unhygienic jail food to visiting officials. It is only after the jail superintendent heard about the punishment that they were freed from isolation.
Much more difficult was his struggle to access healthcare.
In September 2021, when he was being taken to Lucknow for a court hearing, Rahman collapsed in the police van. After a round of several hospitals in Agra, Rahman was shifted to the Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences, Lucknow, where doctors advised that he should be shifted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi.
But, instead, he alleged, he was taken back to Mathura jail and kept in a jail hospital. The jail authorities had said that the state government should sanction money for his treatment.
It took an order from Allahabad High Court to force the jail authorities to shift him to AIIMS.
Forty-three days after he fell ill, he was shifted to the Delhi hospital, where he underwent a heart surgery on November 27.
In April 2022, Rahman was shifted to the Lucknow jail. But his health again deteriorated, as he alleges, he did not have regular access to medicines and missed check-ups at AIIMS.
In August 2022, he says, he suffered a paralytic attack on the left side of his body. “I was unconscious for a month,” he said. “I thought I would die.” He was admitted to King George Medical University Lucknow where he underwent treatment for 10 days.
Civil society activists had written a letter at that time to the authorities in Uttar Pradesh, seeking urgent medical attention and bail for Rahman.
The paralytic attack has left him with blurred vision but Rahman does not look back on his days in prison with despair alone. “They not only jailed me for 32 months but even tried to end my life but they failed,” he said. “I feel like I was reborn twice while in jail.”
Before he was arrested under the UAPA, Rahman was a committed student activist in Uttar Pradesh, who had taken part in several protests over students’ issues as well as against the Citizenship Amendment Act. While he was in prison, the Centre banned the Popular Front of India, and all its subsidiaries, including the Campus Front of India, under the UAPA.
A post-graduate in library science, he is determined to resume his studies as well as carry on his activism. “The organisation is banned but that does not mean I will stop,” Rahman said. “ I will fight for justice till my last breath.”