In Meerut, five families bereft of hope as sole earners shot down during anti-CAA protests

28 December 2019
The family members of Aleem Ansari desperately searched for him on the night of 20 December, hours after clashes between the local police and anti-CAA protestors turned deadly in Meerut. Aleem was shot dead between 2 pm and 4 pm that day and his brother, Salahuddin Ansari (C), who is differently abled, spent the entire night trying to confirm his brother’s demise.
Rishi Kochhar For The Caravan
The family members of Aleem Ansari desperately searched for him on the night of 20 December, hours after clashes between the local police and anti-CAA protestors turned deadly in Meerut. Aleem was shot dead between 2 pm and 4 pm that day and his brother, Salahuddin Ansari (C), who is differently abled, spent the entire night trying to confirm his brother’s demise.
Rishi Kochhar For The Caravan

On December 26, the Uttar Pradesh police released CCTV footage of an unidentified civilian brandishing and firing what looks like a revolver amid the protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 in Meerut. The police claimed that the video is from last Friday, the day anti-CAA protests in the city turned violent—at least five people were killed on 20 December and all of them died from gunshot wounds. The day after the protests, OP Singh, the state police chief said that “not a single bullet was fired at protesters” and that the “protesters died in firing among themselves.” The footage was uploaded to encourage the perception that the police was justified in its use of excessive force against protestors.

The Uttar Pradesh police has consistently used this argument to explain the state-wide killings of at least 19 people so far, and to justify the brutal crackdown on protestors across 21 districts. But lawyers, activists, human-rights groups, fact-finding missions, citizen networks and reports from the ground have contradicted this narrative. They have instead highlighted the leitmotif of the anti-CAA protests—excessive and indiscriminate use of police force, and the specific targeting of Muslim-majority areas.

On 20 December, Meerut, a small city in western Uttar Pradesh with a chequered history of communal conflict, became the site of a showdown between the police and the anti-CAA protesters. That Friday, after the afternoon namaz, a crowd from Firoz Nagar, Tubewell Tiraha and Kotwali—all predominantly Muslim areas in the heart of the city—started to march in protest against the CAA. They were making their way via the Bhumiya ka Pul area to Prahlad Nagar. All of these areas are within a two–kilometre radius. According to a first-information report lodged at the Lisari Gate police station in Prahlad Nagar, the crowd of around twelve hundred protestors was “sloganeering against the CAA, displaying abusive behaviour” and threatening violence. There is no consensus on what or who triggered the clashes that followed. But around 2.30 pm the police unleashed a two-hour long brutal campaign to suppress the protests.

Kaushal Shroff is an independent journalist. He was formerly a staff writer at The Caravan.

Keywords: Citizenship (Amendment) Act meerut Uttar Pradesh Police
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