Road a minor issue, SC, Govt should take larger view, Shaheen Bagh protesters tell interlocutors

Feb 21, 2020

New Delhi: Shaheen Bagh protesters today told the Supreme Court interlocutors Sanjay Hegde and Sadhana Ramachandran that they will not take a minute to clear the blocked road if the Government announces that there will be NRC and the CAA will be rolled back.

They also told them that it is not they but the UP and Delhi Police that have blocked the road from Noida. One of the woman from Shaheen Bagh said that when she was stopped from taking the road she asked why, to which the plainclothes policemen told here that it was because of the Shaheen bagh protest. But when she told them that she was from that area and the protest site has nothing to do with this road, they told her that they had orders ”from above.”

The interlocutors also took serious note of the police reblocking the road from Noida which was opened in the morning after they found on visit to the site that it had nothing to do with Shaheen Bagh protest. They said they will report it to the court.

Some of the women said they were ready to clear the the other half of the Shaheen Bagh raod which they were occupying for the protest provided the Police gave them written assurance about their security.

However, most of them said that unblocking the road was a minor issue as what has brought them on the roads is the threat of NRC, which was designed to dispossess crores of Muslims of their citizenship if they failed to show documents related to their parents.

”We are fighting for the future of our children, as we don’t want to languish them in detention camps,” said women.

The interlocutors sought to clarify to them that they were not the representative of the Government but have been sent by the Supreme Court to find a solution to the road blockade. They said the CAA and NRC were larger issues on which the court would take a view in due course, but the issue at the moment was that the protesters should not protest in a way that inconveniences others, though they added that the law recognised their democratic right to protest.

When the interlocutors asked the protesters to be flexible and see things with ”an open heart”, women said that,” we are ready to open our hearts provided the Supreme Court and the Government too showed large-heartedness.”

A large number of protesters expressed their anguish over their portrayal as ”anti-national” by ministers in the Government and the media, and said appealed to the people of the country to come and see that Shaheen Bagh was not ”mini Pakistan” was was being projected. ” We are all Indians.”

They also gave vent to their anger over the police brutalities against students of Jamia University, saying that that was the reason that they had lost their faith in the Delhi Police. However, a large number of women praised the role of the police of the Shaheen Bagh area for extending ”cooperation” to protesters.

The Interlocut0rs said they they had no doubt that the people of Shaheen Bagh were good Indians, and the Court was with them, recognising their right to protest, but the only point was that they should do so without disturbing the right of others.

The interlocutors said that they have listened to the protesters and they would report to the apex court what they had understood about their demands and sentiments, but they had no authority to decided anything.

In addition to Hegde and Ramachandran, former CIC Wajahat Habibullah has also been named in the three-member team which the SC has appointed. However, Habibullah has not been appointed as interlocutor but as a member to assist them in their engagement with the protesters.

The women in Shaheen Bagh are staging a sit in on the road for over two months now, demanding withdrawal of the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act, and an announcement from the Government that no NRC and NPR would be carried out.

Their protest has inspired similar protest across the country and also in other parts of the world.
–India News Stream