New Delhi (The Stellar News) Saksham Kalia: Kerala based journalist Siddique kappan leaves UP jail, 28 months later he was arrested while he was going to report the Hathras case in Uttar Pradesh, where a girl was raped and her body was cremated midnight by the administration. Siddique was in jail for more than 2 years and released one month later he got bail in two cases he is presented accused.
“I will continue my fight against draconian laws. They kept me in jail even after I got bail… 28 months after a long fight. I don’t know who’s benefiting from my being in jail. These two years were very tough, but I was never afraid,” he told NDTV after his release from the Lucknow jail.
The Hathras case for which Kappan was going to report, a Delhi women was gang-raped and died while treatment in Delhi Hospital. Later, she was cremated in her village and district administration cremated in the midnight. Later, a strong protest erupted across the country, accusing the government lenience in the women safety measures and people accused that the late night cremation was an attempt to safeguard the Uttar Pradesh Government led by the Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath from being defamed over women safety.
Mr Kappan was accused of sedition and charged under the tough anti-terror law UAPA. In February 2022, the Enforcement Directorate filed a money laundering case against him, accusing him of receiving money from the banned People’s Front of India.
In September last year, the Supreme Court granted him bail after observing that no formal charges were filed against him and a document named “Toolkit” recovered by the state police only propagated a call for justice in the rape case.
He got bail in the money laundering case three months later. But his release was held up due to multiple bureaucratic lapses.
.
