Kishorechandra Wangkhem.

KOLKATA, West Bengal — After six days in custody last November, an Imphal court ruled that Kishorechandra Wangkhem be set free as he had not committed a seditious act, as alleged by Manipur’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led state government. The next day, the state police arrested him afresh and charged him under the draconian National Security Act of 1980 that allows a person to be arrested for up to a year without bail. Wangkhem’s crime? Uploading a Facebook video in which he criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP government in Manipur for celebrating the birth anniversary of Rani Laxmibai of Jhansi, Madhya Pradesh, while ignoring freedom fighters from the state. On April 10 2019, four-and-half months after he was arrested in November 2018, Wangkhem finally walked free — unbowed, unrepentant, and profoundly alive to the threat that the ruling BJP poses to India’s democratic fabric. “When the court couldn’t find anything seditious in what I said, how did the government decide that I was a threat to national security?” Wangkhem told HuffPost India in an interview soon after he was released. “Guess we will never know.” SIGN UP FOR THE DAILY BRIEF FROM HUFFPOST INDIA Get our top news delivered to your inbox every morning, Monday to Friday. Newsletters may offer personalized content or advertisements. Privacy Policy Newsletter Please enter a valid email address Thank you for signing up! You should receive an email to confirm your subscription shortly. There was a problem processing your signup; please try again later Facebook

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Flipboard CLOSE As millions of Indians line up to vote for a new government, Wangkhem’s arrest illustrates how high the stakes are in the 2019 general elections, at a time when constitutional rights and freedoms are under threat across the length and breadth of the country, and most visibly in states like Manipur that have a long history of police abuses and oppression. Worryingly, Wangkhem’s case isn’t an exception. In February 2019, a special cell of the Manipur police travelled all the way to Delhi to arrest student activist Veewon Thokchom on charges of sedition for a Facebook post criticising the BJP’s controversial Citizenship Amendment Bill. Thokchom was released four days later, in Manipur, after posting a Rs 30,000 bail bond.

“When the court couldn’t find anything seditious in what I said, how did the government decide that I was a threat to national security?

While the Congress election manifesto promised to strike down the colonial-era sedition law, the BJP has promised to make it even more oppressive. “If it’s within our powers, we will make the sedition law even more stringent,” the BJP’s outgoing Home Minister Rajnath Singh said in a public rally on April 13 2019. “We will make such a strict law that it would send shivers down their spine.” Yet, Wangkhem’s story is also reflects how the fight for freedom continues despite the overwhelming might of a state-apparatus gone rogue. When Wangkhem’s wife Ranjita visited him in the Sijawa Central Jail in Imphal soon after his arrest, she asked him if he wanted to apologise to the government, in exchange for his freedom. “It is against my dignity, integrity and ethics,” he told her. “Let’s fight this then,” Ranjita said, and so they did. Her two daughters, aged four and one-and-half in tow, she began her seemingly unending journeys from lawyers to courts to police stations back to lawyers even as she negotiated the social stigma of having a husband in prison. Alarmed by the frequent visits of the police to their house and news of Wangkhem being arrested, most of his neighbours stopped interacting with the family. “The sedition law was used by the British to oppress Indians who dared to rise against them. Now we are using the same laws to oppress our own people?” Wangkhem said. “What kind of a democracy is this?” STATE VERSUS DISSENT The police first came for Wangkhem in August 2018. “I had written a Facebook post criticising the chief minister and the BJP’s attempts to appoint someone close to the RSS as the vice-chancellor of the Manipur University,” Wangkhem said. “The next day, police arrived at my house.” Wangkhem was taken to the police station and kept in the lock-up for a day and before he was produced before a local court. As word of his arrest went out, the journalism community in Manipur protested and a day later, Wangkhem was released. He was told that the All Manipur Working Journalists Union had ‘apologised’ and secured his release. “I was slightly confused as to why they should apologise, because I was not wrong. But I was also touched that they did and made sure I was released,” he said. The next day however, the head of the journalists union told him to go to the Chief Minister’s house to apologise for his Facebook post. Wangkhem refused and that, he said, put him on a collision course with the government. Three months later, when he uploaded his post about Rani Laxmibai, his ordeal began afresh.

“It is against my dignity, integrity and ethics,” he told her.