‘Total disregard of who I was and what I did’: The Hindu’s Omar Rashid on being detained by UP police

“A policeman said he would put me and my journalism in my place. There was total disregard of who I was and what I did.”

This is what Omar Rashid, the Uttar Pradesh correspondent of The Hindu, was told when he was detained by the Uttar Pradesh police on the evening of December 20. Rashid and Robin Verma, an activist whom he knows personally, were picked up from a restaurant at about 6.40 pm near the Bharatiya Janata Party headquarters.

In this conversation with Saurabh Sharma, Rashid said he was “aggressively” questioned on his identity and his whereabouts on December 19, when protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act turned violent in Lucknow. From the start, Rashid said he told the police he was a journalist, showing them his press card, ID card and voter ID. Rashid and Verma were told a senior officer wanted to talk to them, and were taken to Hazratganj police station. Verma was assaulted here, Rashid said, first with a belt and then slapped, while Rashid was continuously questioned. They were then taken to a police outpost in Sultanpuri where the questioning continued.

“As soon as we entered the police station, there was a kind of celebration among the police officers…as if they’ve finally cracked a case and found the main co-conspirators of the violence on December 19,” Rashid told Newslaundry.

He said the police also raised a lot of questions on his identity and background. “One of the police threatened me, [saying] that he would tear off my beard. He emphasised on my [being] Kashmiri and asked me where I had hidden so-called Kashmiris, and the whereabouts of people I don’t know.”

Rashid was finally released and told he had been brought in due to “confusion and misunderstanding of constable-rank officers”. He said his fellow journalists were lied to by the police when they asked where Rashid and Verma had been taken.

Watch.