A 20-year-old protester has died after falling ill due to being drenched in the rain at the Hussainabad Clock Tower in Lucknow where women have been protesting against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and the NRC.
Speaking to THE WEEK, activist Sadaf Jafar—who was among those jailed for the protests on December 19 in Lucknow—said, “Four days ago, the girl was at the tower when the rains came down. She came down with fever and probably pneumonia. Our requests to put up tents at the protest site have been turned down repeatedly.”
The protests at the Hussainabad Clock Tower—one of the two sites in Lucknow where women have been leading demonstrations—have been on for the last 38 days.
The deceased protester, Tayyaba, was a final-year BA student at a local college.
Jafar said that she had been pleading with women, particularly the elderly and the sick, to go home at night and not sit out given the dewy weather and the unexpected rains. “The women refuse to budge. Each one of them believes that she leads the protest and thus cannot take a break from it,” adds Jafar.
Tayyaba would come to the Hussainabad Clock Tower in the evenings to join the protesters and stay the night with her mother by her side.
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The protests, which started on January 17, have been managed completely by women, while men have formed a protective layer around them. Banners at the protest site specifically ask men to stay away to avert the possibility of any police brutality.
Many other woman and children at the protest site have fallen sick due to the inclement weather. On January 19, the Uttar Pradesh Police had forcibly taken away the blankets that the protesters had been given by donors. The police version was that the blankets were not distributed in a ‘proper manner’ and hence had to be seized.
Another young protester at the site, who is a teacher who joins the protest after her job gets over, said, “These things (death of Tayyaba) will not break us. This is a very long fight and we are ready to fight it for as long as it takes. We owe it to Tayyaba.”
