Allahabad: The Allahabad High Court on Tuesday sought a reply from the Uttar Pradesh government while hearing a PIL alleging illegal detention and torture of juveniles during anti-CAA protests in the state in December last year. The petition was filed on the basis of a fact-finding report prepared by HAQ-Centre for Child Rights, which alleged that many minors were illegally detained and tortured in UP — particularly in Muzaffarnagar, Bijnor, Sambhal, and Lucknow — during the CAA-NRC protests.

The bench, comprising of Chief Justice Govind Mathur and Justice Siddhartha Varma, asked the state to file all details relating to each and every district of the state with regard to the application of the provisions of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015. It posted the matter for hearing on December 14. The report called ‘Brutalising Innocence – Detention, Torture and Criminalization of Minors by UP police to quell anti – CAA protests’, was first published on January 31, 2020. HAQ-Centre for Child Rights, an NGO, was represented by advocates Vrinda Grover, Soutik Banerjee and Tanmay Sadh.

“The perusal of the aforesaid fact finding reports of the Petitioner highlights the actions of the UP police in illegally detaining minors and torturing them is in grave breach of the Juvenile Justice Act, 2015; the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child; UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment and Punishment, and the Constitutional rights guaranteed to children under Articles 14, 15, 19 and 21,” read the petition filed by NGO HAQ. In December last year, during protests against the CAA and NRC, several districts of UP had witnessed violence and several people were detained and arrested in the aftermath.

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