Police in Uttar Pradesh state have embarked on ‘reign of terror’ against Muslims in wake of new citizenship law
It was midnight at a police barracks in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh and in a freezing windowless room about 150 Muslim men and boys sat huddled, bloodied and bruised. Some of the shivering prisoners had raw gashes across their hands and faces, others had broken limbs splayed out at awkward angles. The beatings from police came frequently, according to multiple corresponding accounts; to those who asked for water or closed their eyes in drowsiness or simply did nothing at all. Over and over, metal rods and bamboo canes hit soft human skin. Some had been stripped of their clothes. The youngest among them was just 12 years old, said witnesses.
How hundreds of innocent Muslim residents of the city of Muzaffarnagar came to be rounded up on 20 December, before being tortured in police detention, is part of what Indian activist and academic Yogendra Yadav described as an unprecedented and ruthless “reign of terror” imposed upon the country’s most populous state over the past two weeks.
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