NEW DELHI: The 'notoriously intolerant' BJP government's crackdown on some of the most recognisable civil society activists has been unprecedented in both scale and fervour, write Hannah Ellis-Petersen and Shaikh Azizur Rahman in The Guardian .

In the write-up, the leading protesters arrested during the anti-citizenship law stir narrate their ordeal during their time in the jails in Uttar Pradesh .

One of the known activists, 73-year-old Mohammad Shoaib was quoted in the write-up as saying that he was arrested in the middle of the night and brought to a police station in Lucknow. “Police officers abused me badly while I was in their custody and they threatened me in many ways.”

"During the anti-CAA protests in UP, Shoaib was among dozens of leading social and legal activists who began to be systematically and illegally targeted, rounded up and detained by police, with several tortured and most kept in prison on fabricated charges, without ever being presented to a magistrate, as the law requires.

"For Shoaib, his detention was particularly farcical. He stands accused of leading a protest that turned violent in Lucknow on December 19, despite the fact it occurred while he was under police house arrest, having been detained the night before," writes The Guardian.

After police failed to produce any evidence before a judge, Shoaib was bailed last month, following weeks behind bars. But the charges have not been dropped.

The Guardian quoted another prominent activist in Uttar Pradesh and spokesperson of the Congress, Sadaf Jafar, who broke down while recounting the torture in the jail. She said she was arrested while protesting peacefully at the Lucknow rally. While in the police station, Jafar said, officers subjected her to relentless racist and Islamophobic slurs. “They started slapping and beating me, calling me ‘Pakistani’ and other language I could never repeat. "Another senior male officer told me he had seen me ‘talking big’ at the protest and that he would teach me a lesson; that he would charge me with attempted murder and make sure I ‘rotted in prison,’" Jafar told The Guardian.

The Guardian further writes, "It is not just Muslim activists who report torture. Deepak Kabir, 46, a prominent Hindu poet and activist, said he had been arrested and badly beaten after he went into a police station to look for fellow activists."

“It’s a very thought out process to target well-known faces because if they crush us, then everyone else is immediately intimidated,” says Kabir.

"The Uttar Pradesh police and government have denied any wrongful and illegal arrests and torture in custody," it writes.

The Guardian says, "The passing of the Citizenship Amendment Act has led to India’s greatest unrest for more than four decades. Many believe the Act brazenly discriminates against Muslims and could tear apart the secular foundations of India. There are also fears that associated plans for a national register of citizens will require only Muslims to produce evidence of their nationality, and could lead to detentions and deportation."

