Khan Rukhma
A 21 year old, social activist and journalism student Zakir Ali Tyagi, was arrested in the middle of the night on 25th August, on a false allegation of cow slaughtering.
Like a normal routine, Tyagi was watching prime-time news on his laptop when he suddenly heard some banging on his door.
Tyagi got up to open the door where he was shocked to see around 17 policemen at his doorstep. He asked them the reason for their arrival, but they didn’t release any information.
“And all of sudden they started beating me up and said, ‘Tu hi hai wo Modi – Yogi karne wala na’ (you’re the one who talks about Modi and Yogi). Then the police dragged me out of my house in the middle of the night and pushed me into their police jeep. I kept asking them what I did, why were they taking me, but they didn’t answer me,” Zakir said.
While moving to the police station Tyagi said, he assumed that the Yogi government could kill him in an encounter on false allegations like they mostly do.
He added, he might be arrested for his involvement in the anti-CAA protests earlier this year at Shaheen Bagh.
Later police took Tyagi to Kila Parikshiygarh station, which is 5-6 km away from his village Bara gaon. There he spent the whole night in a lock up, but none of them questioned him or told him the reason for his arrest.
‘Arrested under political pressure’
However in the morning,some people from his village came to the police station for Tyagi’s bail. But police said that he had been arrested on the suspicion of cow slaughtering.
While on 23rd August a villager named Munneshwar filed a complaint informing the police that the remains of a cow were found on his farm. But in his complaint he didn’t mention any name.
“Munneshwar was also present at the station with other villagers for his bail. Munneshwar had filed a complaint about finding the remains of a cow on his farm in BaraGaon. Munneshwar had not taken any names, but the police lodged a nameless complaint and arrested Zubair (a villager) and me after two days,” Tyagi tells The Kashmiriyat.
Tyagi also added that Zubair was also arrested on the same suspicion of cow slaughter.
“Zubair was in lock up for two days, without any proof. They picked Zubair because they were being pressured by local BJP ground workers,”said.
He also said ‘Zubair se mera koi sambandh nahi hai hum bas ek hi gaon ek hai’.