Features

“Sitting by the sea in Gaza, eating Humus and falafel with friends, listening to patriotic music – Al – Taghreba al- Falastenya (Palestinian Alienation), are amongst my best memories of home”, says Ali Abushbak a Palestinian national residing in India.

Family members and comrades of the accused in Bhima Koregaon-Elgar Parishad case, serving as under-trial prisoners in Mumbai’s Taloja and Byculla jails, demanded the release of all political prisoners at a virtual press conference on Saturday. Their exhortation comes due to a lack of healthcare workers to treat the inmates during the pandemic.

Azra Mobin has been through a whirlwind of emotions in the past few weeks. The 35-year old social worker in Lucknow, while fasting during Ramadan, has arranged the cremation of around 7-8 COVID-19 patients who had no one to cremate them.

Online facilitation of the COVID-19 vaccine process leaves behind the poor beneficiaries, widening the digital divide in the country.

The initiative “Doctors on Road”, the brainchild of Dr. Kafeel Khan and Dr. Harjit Singh Bhatti was conceived after realising the appalling conditions of the marginalised communities living in the hinterlands of the cities after the second wave struck India in mid-April.

The people who were targeted were young in their earlier 20s looking for a job, being bread winners and labelled as terrorist are now uncertain of their future, the police have threatened them a lot.

“They will always hunt down people who fight for justice," says Fathima Bathool, wife of Campus Front of India national general secretary Rauf Shareef who was arrested initially by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for money laundering and then later was charged under draconian UAPA by Uttar Pradesh police, accusing of stirring unrest in Hathras following the caste killing of a Dalit woman.

After almost 150 years of the Criminal Tribes Act and almost 70 years after the Habitual Offenders’ Act, the collective callousness of the police department has been the same and that has been hampering the lives of de-notified communities in significant, unimaginable ways.

Shifa Ur Rehman was at the forefront of the protest in Jamia, the epicentre of the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) movement. During the lockdown last year, he was arrested under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) by Delhi police for allegedly being part of the conspiracy that orchestrated the Delhi pogrom.

Families of political prisoners joined in a virtual meeting with their memories and to tell how they are coping up in this Ramadan without their loved ones.

The manual scavenging practice continues to kill people 28 years after the mandate and the authorities to curb it facilitate its existence.

Uttar Pradesh government is accused of under-reporting the crisis and backlogging test to prevent 'defaming' the nation.