It has been two years since 62-year old Afshan Rahim met her activist son, who is in jail facing sedition and several other charges under the\u00a0\u2018anti-terror\u2019 law\u00a0for making speeches during the mass protests against a controversial citizenship law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cEach day is like a horror. I am worried for him, but I am not remorseful about what he stood for. He is on the path of haq [rights],\u201d Rahim told Al Jazeera by phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI am hopeful he will be out soon inshallah [God Willing],\u201d says Rahim whose 34-year-old son Sharjeel Imam, a PhD scholar at New Delhi\u2019s Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), has been languishing in jail since January 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Imam is believed to be the pioneer of the Shaheen Bagh protest, a 100-day-long peaceful sit-in in the capital organised in response to the passage of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) by the Indian Parliament in December 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The CAA fast-tracks citizenship for non-Muslims from three neighbouring countries but excludes Muslims. The passage of the act, which the UN said was \u201cfundamentally discriminatory\u201d, triggered countrywide protests, particularly by the minority Muslim community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHe was made a scapegoat, just to suppress the anti-CAA movement, but they [government] gave a message to the entire community, that if you dare to speak, you will face the consequences,\u201d says Muzamil, Imam\u2019s younger brother who now looks after the family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Imam\u2019s father had died in 2014 after battling cancer for several years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cPeople think that only Sharjeel is suffering. Definitely, he is in jail facing worse conditions but the condition of my mother is no different at home. She doesn\u2019t let me go anywhere fearing she would lose me too,\u201d Muzamil told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSharjeel has cases registered in different states and I need to travel for legal procedures. I can\u2019t be with my mother and brother at the same time. I don\u2019t know what to do,\u201d Muzamil says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Imam faces eight cases across five Indian states \u2013 Delhi, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, and Uttar Pradesh \u2013 on charges including sedition and under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
UAPA is a stringent \u2018anti-terrorism\u2019 law that allows an accused to be designated as \u2018terrorist\u2019 and detained for months without bail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sharjeel was initially booked for a speech he had delivered during anti-CAA protests on January 16, 2020, at Aligarh Muslim University \u2013 a prominent minority institution in the country. He had called for a blockade of a narrow corridor that connects mainland India to the northeastern states to force the government to listen to the protesters\u2019 demands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The speech was widely castigated by India\u2019s mainstream media and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which accused him of having intentions to\u2019 break the country\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, Imam maintained that he had only called for peaceful protests. \u201cIt was basically a call for \u2018chakka jam\u2019 [road blockade]. They can put cases on me by editing these clips, but there is nothing that they can prove,\u201d he had\u00a0told\u00a0English daily Indian Express two days before his arrest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since being sent to Delhi\u2019s Tihar jail, he has been charged for giving several \u2018seditious\u2019 speeches at anti-CAA protest sites across India.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even as courts have granted bail in four out of the eight cases against him, he has not been released.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThey continue to frame new charges against him. Whenever he secures bail in one case, he is arrested and framed with fresh charges in another case. They are so many cases against him at so many places just to prolong his time in jail,\u201d Imam\u2019s lawyer Ahmad Ibrahim told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis is merely a tactic to weaken his resolve.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Six months after his arrest, Delhi police also charged Imam with sedition and slapped him with UAPA in a case related to communal riots in northeast Delhi in February. The riots that led to the killing of more than 50 people, mostly Muslims, were triggered after Hindu mobs attacked anti-CAA protest sites in the national capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cImam was already in jail when the riots happened. By any stretch of the imagination, how can he be planning Delhi riots or be a part of a larger conspiracy?\u201d Ibrahim asks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n