A boy, arrested over the anti-CAA protests in Lucknow and jailed for 41 days, was discovered by his legal counsel to be a minor while filing a response to the recovery notice served to him.
In utter disregard to the Juvenile Justice Act, Sanju Ali (name changed) a daily wage worker at one of the restaurants around the main protest site in Lucknow, was arrested and jailed with adults for the anti-CAA protests in Lucknow on December 19.
Forty arrests were made from the main site and the protesters were charged under Sections 147, 148, 149, 152, 307, 323, 504, 506, 332, 353, 188, 435, 436, 120b and 427, among other sections of the IPC. These protesters were subsequently sent to jail and the government also issued a standard recovery notice to them for Rs 2.59 crores for damage to government property belonging to various departments (such as PWD and police).
Advocate Yashab Husain was approached by Sanju’s employers to secure his bail. “The boy is from Malda in West Bengal and was on his way to shopping for the restaurant where he worked when he was picked up by the police for rioting”, Husain told THE WEEK.
The bail which Husain argued for in the Sessions Court mentions that there is no clear evidence of Sanju being part of the protests or causing any injuries to the police personnel.
It was when Husain started to work on the response to the recovery notice handed to Sanju that he asked for an identity card. The Aadhaar card that Sanju then produced listed his date of birth as 13/3/2004, making him 15 years, nine months and six days old at the time of arrest.
“Although other people from Malda were also arrested, the fact of him being a minor never surfaced during my initial interaction with him. Everyone was too worried about their own safety to point out his age to me”, says Husain.
On Friday, Husain complained to Lucknow Police Commissioner over the state’s Integrated System for Grievance Redressal pointing to the abuse of the fundamental, legal and constitutional rights by the Hazratganj police which had arrested the minor.
“Grave injustice has been done to the boy by keeping him with adults in judicial custody,” says the grievance which calls for “inquiry by a gazetted officer” given the sensitive nature of the case. The prayer also asks for a taking back of all cases (including attempt to murder and rioting with a deadly weapon) listed against the minor. It also states that the boy's mobile phone has not been returned to him till the date of the filing of the grievance.
“He is very scared and keeps saying that he wants to go home to meet his parents,” Husain told THE WEEK.
More than 200 people were arrested in Lucknow for the anti CAA protests which turned violent in December. The framing of a charge-sheet against them is expected to take a year, after which a trial could continue for three to five years.
