The Delhi Police on Saturday tried to detain human rights activist Nadeem Khan in Bengaluru without a warrant, human rights group Association for Protection of Civil Rights said.
Khan is the national secretary of the group, which describes itself as an organisation dedicated to working on upholding civil liberties.
The Association for Protection of Civil Rights, or APCR, said that around 5 pm on Saturday, the station house officer of Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh police station, along with four other officials, arrived at the home of Khan’s brother in Bengaluru.
The officials asked Khan to “voluntarily” accompany them to Delhi for questioning, without producing a warrant or notice, but merely showing him a copy of a first information report, the organisation alleged. The case was registered at Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh police station.
The FIR, seen by Scroll, pertains to an exhibition in which the Association for Protection of Civil Rights participated in Hyderabad from November 14 to November 16. The police invoked sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to promoting enmity between groups, criminal conspiracy and public mischief.
The case was filed on November 30 based on a complaint by a police official identified as Sub-Inspector Akshay. While the first information report was filed two weeks after the exhibition, the document said there was no delay in the complainant’s report.
The event in Hyderabad highlighted the Supreme Court’s guidelines on mob lynching, bulldozer demolitions and hate speech, a member of APCR told Scroll, adding that the organisation was just one of the participants in the exhibition.
The APCR member said the organisation was not sure why the case was filed two weeks after the event.
The civil rights group said that the police on Saturday badgered Khan and his family for over six hours and tried to coerce him into accompanying them to Delhi, after which they issued him a notice under the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita directing him to appear before the police.
The first information report is said to be based on a social media post that featured a video of Khan speaking at the exhibition. The video did not show any unlawful speech or activity, APCR maintained.
The organisation alleged that the police’s actions constituted “another attempt to intimidate and silence human right fefenders and questioning voices”.
The first information report was filed at 12.48 pm on Saturday in Delhi, and the police were said to have arrived at the home of Khan’s brother in Bengaluru at 5 pm on the same day. APCR said this led them to believe “that the police were on their way to Bangalore before the formal filing of the FIR, in a rushed and unlawful attempt to arrest [Khan].”
The organisation alleged that the police was engaging in “intimidation tactics” and trying to suppress APCR’s work to “secure justice and access to human rights for all”.
The People’s Union for Civil Liberties, another human rights organisation, alleged that the Delhi Police was “conducting a targeted witch-hunt” of Khan at the instigation of a few accounts on social media platform X.
The organisation noted that the sections in the FIR against Khan were punishable by less than three years, adding that the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita as well as Supreme Court guidelines barred the police from arresting Khan without giving him a notice first.
About 20 to 25 police personnel were said to have first visited the APCR office in Delhi around 9 pm on Friday, when the office was closed. They then sought details from a security guard about Khan and other members of the organisation, according to APCR.
PUCL said the fact that around 20 police personnel visited the APCR office even before the first information report was filed showed malicious intent. It alleged that the police wanted to target the organisation for its work on fighting cases of mob lynching and hate crimes.