New Delhi: Finally with his wife, Kerala-based journalist Siddique Kappan is overwhelmed. He sounds tired but there is strength in his voice. Kappan finally walked out of prison Thursday morning after nearly 850 days of incarceration and 41 days after he was granted bail by the Allahabad High Court in a money-laundering case.
“Sometimes I would wonder if I would ever walk out of jail. The walls would suffocate me. I think it’s the same for all others who have been victims of draconian laws and false cases,” he told ThePrint, adding that he feels overwhelmed with freedom.
Kappan and three others were arrested on 5 October 2020 while on their way to Hathras in Uttar Pradesh in the aftermath of the alleged gang-rape and murder of a 20-year-old Dalit woman. Apart from Kappan, Alam, the driver of the car in which the three were travelling, two Campus Front of India (CFI) office-bearers — Atiqur Rahman and Masood Ahmad — and three others were arrested in connection with the case.
In a chargesheet filed last April, the UP Police had accused them of “sedition” and “attempting to incite violence” in the state following the tragic incident. The UP Police had claimed that Kappan is associated with the now-banned Popular Front of India (PFI).
On Thursday morning, after he walked out of the Lucknow jail where he spent the last 28 months, Kappan said he will “continue to fight for justice”.
“If not anything else, my incarceration period only made me stronger. Every day is fresh in my mind and will remain fresh. I keep wondering how can something like journalism, going to visit a place land me and the others in jail. Initial days were extremely difficult but with time, I became calmer and stopped getting too hopeful. Today, too, I wasn’t really excited. It is only when I finally set foot outside the jail that I told myself that I am free,” he said.
“But the legal battle will be on, I won’t budge till that ends,” added Kappan.
Unable to hold her emotions back, his wife Rehana Kappan told ThePrint over the phone Thursday, “He is busy with the press. I can’t wait to sit with him and have a meal together.”
As for now, the couple will have to continue to stay in Delhi as part of Kappan’s bail conditions.
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Delays in verification of sureties for Kappan
Charged with the Unlawful Prevention of Activities Act (UAPA), Kappan was first granted bail by the Supreme Court in the case registered against him by UP Police on 9 September last year. “Every person has a right to free expression. He is trying to show that the (Hathras) victim needs justice, and raises a common voice. Will this be a crime in the eyes of law,” Justice U.U. Lalit noted while granting him bail.
However, Kappan remained behind bars due to the case lodged against him by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) under provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). The ED claimed that Kappan and the other accused received around Rs 1.36 crore from illegal sources and used part of it for “unlawful activities over time”.
Following the SC order, a lower court last September asked Kappan to furnish two sureties of Rs 1 lakh each, and a personal bond of the same amount. On 23 December, the Allahabad HC granted him bail in the PMLA case. Till he was granted bail in the UAPA case, the surety verification was still pending — three months after sureties were provided. Mohamed Danish K.S., one of Kappan’s lawyers, termed this an “inordinate delay”.
Asked about the reasons behind this delay, Kappan’s lawyer remarked, “That is a question you should ask through your story.”
Stating that it took “more than 90 days” for the surety verification in the UAPA case, Mohamed Danish K.S. told ThePrint that the surety verifications were received “last Monday”.
“The next step was a bail bond and the release order was prepared. The delay is quite unacceptable in any state in the country. The court demanded only local sureties, in UP, which should ideally take only a few hours. We don’t want to blame anyone in particular, but it is the authorities that do the verification,” he added.
“The sureties were provided on 6 January but the verification process was initiated only on 12 January. It was only last Monday that the verification process was completed and submitted in court. We had expected it to be completed within 10 days,” the lawyer said.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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