Journalist Kappan: imprisoned and 'tortured' for trying to report a rape

BBC journalist Geeta Pandey travelled to a village in Uttar Pradesh, India's northernmost state, to cover "the Hathras tale" last October 5, but her journey was entirely different than that of Sidhique Kaapan, a journalist who was jailed and 'tortured' for trying to report a rape.

A 19-year-old Dalit woman had died a few days before in the village of Bhulgarhi in Hathras after she was reportedly gang-raped by four of her upper-caste neighbours, reports the BBC. 

The violent beating, the woman's death, and the police's forced cremation of her body in the middle of the night without her family's consent made international headlines.

Pandey arrived at the young woman's home about 10 am and met her bereaved family - relatives and neighbours who told her about a beautiful girl with a shy smile and long dark hair.

They told her about the wounds on her body and the callous treatment she had received from the police and the government in both life and death.

On the same morning, Sidhique Kappan, a 41-year-old journalist for the Malayalam-language news portal Azhimukham, left Delhi, where he had been based for nine years, to travel to Bhulgarhi.

Kappan, however, was apprehended in a car with three other men about 42 kilometers (26 miles) from Hathras. He finished his 150th day in prison last week.

Kappan was "dragged and battered with sticks on the thighs, slapped on the face, forced to remain awake from 6pm to 6am on the pretext of interrogation, and subjected to extreme mental torture" in the police lockup that night, according to an account he gave his family and lawyer.

A diabetic, he was also denied his medication, he said.

His accusations have been refuted by the police. They say Kappan was apprehended because he was on his way to Hathras as part of a plot to disrupt law and order and incite caste riots. Similar charges have been leveled against the other three men in the vehicle.

Kappan's fellow passengers, according to police, were members of the Popular Front of India (PFI), a hardline Muslim organization based in Kerala that authorities often accuse of having links to terrorist groups, and which the Uttar Pradesh government wants outlawed.

They said that Kappan was pretending to be a journalist from a defunct newspaper while in reality he too was a member of the PFI - a claim denied by the Kerala Union of Working Journalists, Kappan's lawyer, and the PFI.

The journalists' union, of which Kappan is an office bearer, has accused the Uttar Pradesh police of making an "absolutely false and incorrect statement" and called his detention "illegal".

The union insists that Kappan is "only a journalist" and "attempted to visit Hathras in discharge of his journalistic duty". The union has filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking his release. His employer, Azhimukham, also issued a statement saying he was on their payroll and was going to Hathras on assignment.

Lawyer Wills Mathews, who is representing both Kappan and the journalists' union, told the BBC that initially his client was charged with minor bailable offences. But two days later, police accused Kappan of sedition and invoked the dreaded Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) - an anti-terrorism law that makes bail almost impossible.

Mathews said his client was a "100% neutral, independent journalist".

"Sharing a taxi with some people doesn't make him guilty," he said.

"A journalist has to meet people from different walks of life, including those accused of crimes, and just being in the company of other accused can't be a reason for arrest," Matthews added.

For weeks after his arrest, according to court documents, Kappan was allowed no contact with the outside world.

He was allowed to make the first phone call to his family on 2 November - 29 days after his arrest - and spoke to his wife eight days after that. Mr Mathews was allowed to meet him only after 47 days, after he had petitioned the Supreme Court.

Raihanath, Kappan's wife, told me on the phone from her home in her village in Kerala's Malappuram district that until his phone call on 2 November, she was "not even sure that he was alive".

Then last month, the Supreme Court granted him a five-day interim bail to visit his 90-year-old mother, who was bedridden and ailing. For the four days he was there, six policemen from Uttar Pradesh and two dozen from the state stood guard outside.

It was a fraught visit, Raihanath said. "He was tense about his mother's poor health, he was worried about our finances and the future of our three children," she said. She insists her husband has done nothing wrong and says he has been targeted because he is a Muslim.

According to Raihanath, the police repeatedly asked her husband if he ate beef (many Hindus revere cows, and in recent years Muslims have been targeted for eating beef or transporting cattle). She said they questioned him about how many times he had met Dr Zakir Naik, a controversial Islamic preacher charged with hate speech and money laundering and living in exile in Malaysia (Mr Naik denies the allegations) and asked him why Muslims have an affinity to Dalits - formerly known as "untouchables".

Abhilash MR, a Senior Supreme Court lawyer, told me: "If someone were to say Sidhique Kappan's arrest is Islamophobic, I would endorse that opinion".

Abhilash, who said he had been following the case closely, called it a "political witch-hunt" and a "case of political persecution". Kappan's "fundamental rights are being trampled upon", he said.

Critics have accused the present government in Uttar Pradesh, led by the controversial saffron-robed Hindu monk Yogi Adityanath, of unfairly targeting Muslims. Yogi Adityanath has been described as India's most divisive and abusive politician and accused of using his election rallies to whip up anti-Muslim hysteria.

His government and the police force attracted global condemnation for the way it responded to the young woman's gang-rape and death in Hathras, especially after the authorities cremated her body in the middle of the night - keeping her family and media away from her funeral pyre.

In the days after the death of the young Dalit woman, protests were held across India. In Uttar Pradesh, officers were heavily criticised for beating protesters with sticks in an attempt to stop them from visiting the victim's family. Opposition leaders who had joined the protest were shoved around.

On 4 October, a day before Kappan and Pandey had headed separately for Hathras, Adityanath claimed that there was "an international conspiracy" to tarnish the image of the state and that "the incident was being exploited by those who were upset at his government's progress".

The incident has worried press freedom activists, who say they fear India is becoming increasingly unsafe for journalists. Last year, the country was ranked 142 on the 180-country World Press Freedom Index, compiled annually by Reporters Without Borders - a fall of two places from the previous year.

In February, police filed criminal charges against eight journalists who covered the farmers' protests in Delhi. Female journalists and those from the Muslim community are especially picked on for trolling on social media.

The police had not been able to produce a single piece of incriminating evidence against Kappan, said Mr Abhilash, the Supreme Court lawyer. They had succeeded in one thing however, he said: sending a warning to reporters not to head for Hathras.

Kappan's arrest was "different from arresting a regular person", said his lawyer Mr Matthews. "Silencing media is the end of democracy," he said.