New Delhi, December 11, 2022 (PPI-OT): In what shows the inefficiency of the Indian judicial system, three months have passed since bail sureties were provided for jailed Muslim journalist Siddique Kappan, the verification of the same is still pending in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Siddique Kappan had provided sureties as per the Indian Supreme Court order in a case registered against him under draconian law Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA). Siddique Kappan’s wife, Raihanah Kappan told daily The Hindu that the “endless delay” in verifying the given sureties was unjustifiable. Too disappointed to learn that the verification of bail conditions is not yet complete even three months after the SC order, she said.
“Justice delayed is justice denied. Three months have passed since we provided the sureties for bail in the UAPA case as per the SC order of September 9. Not to mention the freedom of expression, but with not even the minimum amount of responsibility from the authorities to acknowledge the sureties received, it is literally forbidding justice. We are expecting to get the bail conditions fulfilled at the earliest by verifying the provided sureties, to not paralyse the process,” The Hindu quoted Mohamed Dhanish K.S., Kappan’s lawyer, as saying.
Roop Rekha Verma, a former acting Vice-Chancellor of Lucknow University, one of the sureties in Kappan’s case, said, “I am very surprised and have a lot of questions in my mind. If in the case of a Supreme Court order the implementation can take so much time, what about very ordinary cases where matters are entirely left to lower courts? How much a litigant might be suffering?”
Kappan remained in jail for over 700 days before the Supreme Court granted him bail on September 9. He was arrested in October 2020 while on his way to Uttar Pradesh’s Hathras to report on the gangrape and death of a Dalit woman. He was booked under the UAPA and charged with sedition. The UP government alleged that he and other Muslim men were the part of a larger conspiracy to “foment religious discord and spread terror in the country”.
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