Hoardings on 28 accused of damaging properties during CAA protests come up in Lucknow

Shahira Naim

Tribune News Service

Lucknow, March 6

In a bizarre move, the Lucknow police have put up hoardings carrying the names and addresses of the 28 accused of damaging property during the anti-CAA protests in the city in December last year.

The hoardings which have come up overnight at prominent crossings of the city ask the accused to pay Rs 64 lakh or have their properties seized.

Describing it as a mockery of law, former UP DGP SR Darapuri, whose name also figures among the accused, said neither a chargesheet had been filed in the case, nor their guilt proved.

“How can the police put up such hoardings merely on the basis of their own reports? Has any court of law held us guilty? The police action of putting up such hoardings across the city with our photographs and addresses amounts to defamation and violates our right to privacy,” he said.

Darapuri said none of those who figured in the hoardings had been served personal notices.

According to Lucknow district magistrate Abhishek Prakash, around 100 such hoardings are to be put up across the city at prominent crossing of the city.

He said hoardings would be put up in Hazratganj, Hasanganj, Qaiserbagh and Thakurganj police station areas where the violence had taken place.

Another accused, social activist Sadaf Jafar, said, “Now it is difficult to move out of the house to even buy bread. When the court has put a stay on my arrest and the ‘kurki’ of my property, how proper is it to put up such hoardings?”

She said the sole purpose of the Lucknow police appeared to be “name and shame us and leave us vulnerable”.

Darapuri said they planned to take legal action against this move of the Lucknow police, which is mentally torturing them.