Guilty or innocent? Wait continues for Sharjeel trial

Waves of protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) are rocking the Capital as anger against the controversial legislation is bubbling to the surface.

- Jignasa Sinha and Dhrubo Jyoti

NEW DELHI: It is December 2019. Universities are particularly on the boil, with students, especially Muslim groups, hosting sit-in agitations, spreading tarpaulin sheets in campuses and roadside corners, organising impromptu meetings, and joining other organic demonstrations organised by locals. At one such meeting at Jamia Millia Islamia on December 13, a 31-year-old student from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) steps up to the front of the gathering, his round-rimmed glasses and black tunic casting a shadow under the street-light and speaks about CAA, Assam, street protest strategy, and how Muslims must unite for a "chakka jam" (road blockade).

It is January 2020. Anti-CAA protests have gathered steam and a massive sit-in blocking a road in Shaheen Bagh in southeast Delhi is attracting global attention. Northern India is in foment as agitations are cropping up across Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal. The same student, a part of a WhatsApp group called Muslim Students of JNU (MSJ), travels to Aligarh Muslim University, and delivers a speech similar in tone to his Jamia comments, this time allegedly calling for a blockade of the strategic chicken's neck that connects mainland India to the Northeast. He is arrested two weeks later after a political storm over his remarks and the shadow of violence looming over Delhi. The Capital's worst riots in three decades would break out a month later.