A group of ten students and activists, including a female journalist, who were arrested in Uttar Pradesh’s Ghazipur district while they were on a ‘Satyagraha’ foot march to Delhi have gone on a hunger strike in jail.
In a letter to the district magistrate, addressed through the jail superintendent Ghazipur, the 10 said they were starting a fast from 5 p.m. on Thursday against their arrest.
“We have been put in jail without a proper reason,” they said in the letter accessed by this paper.
“This is not just a violation of our human rights but also it is putting us to serious mental torture,” they said. “To oppose this and to avail our human and citizen rights, we all will fast until we are free.”
While the police have accused them of misleading people on the issue of CAA and the proposed nationwide NRC, friends of those arrested, under the banner of Team Nagrik Satyagraha, accused the police of trying to “shrink and divert the objective” of the yatra.
“In [the] FIR they said our yatra is against CAA and NRC. This is an attempt of police and administration to divert the whole agenda of this journey. Our yatra is against every form of violence and hate which exists in society and to spread [the] idea of Gandhi,” the group said in a statement.
No response
District Magistrate of Ghazipur and superintendent of Ghazipur jail did not respond to phone calls made to inquire about the hunger strike.
The associates of the jailed persons had on Wednesday expressed shock after a local Sub-Divisional Magistrate court issued them notices for bail bonds of ₹2.5 lakh each, and two Gazetted persons per individual as guarantors.
The students, mostly associated with the Banaras Hindu University, along with the journalist and social activists, were leading a foot march from Chauri-Chaura near Gorakhpur to Rajghat in Delhi. On the ninth day of the march, after completing 250 km, the ten persons were arrested in Ghazipur under Sections 107/16/151 of the CrPC and sent to jail on Tuesday, said Team Nagrik Satyagraha, the organisers.
Those arrested were identified as Pradeepika Saraswat, who is a journalist, Manish Sharma, Sheshnarayan Ojha, Priyesh Kumar Pandey, Anant Shukla, Atul Yadav, Neeraj Rai, Raj Abhishek, Ravidnda Kumar Ravi and Murari Kumar.
