CAA: Why is UP Govt Hiding Post-Mortem Reports, Asks Filmmaker

"I think Adityanath has essentially declared that you are not living according to the rule of law."

Nakul Singh Sawhney, filmmaker and founder of ChalChitra Abhiyaan.  

(Photo: The Quint/Mukul Bhandari)

Video Editor: Prashant Chauhan
Camera: Mukul Bhandari

Anti-CAA protests have claimed 19 lives in Uttar Pradesh alone. Over 1,100 people are under arrest and 5,558 have been kept in preventive detention, including Rihai Manch’s Mohammed Shoib and retired Indian Police Service officer SR Darapuri. Section 144 has been extended to different parts of Uttar Pradesh.

To know more about the ground situation, we spoke to Nakul Singh Sawhney, a filmmaker who runs a media collective called ChalChitra Abhiyaan in western Uttar Pradesh. The collective works to bring out local issues of marginalised communities in different video formats.

Nakul and his team have met the families of those who were killed or injured in the police crackdown. In this interview to The Quint, the filmmaker said that under CM Adityanath’s leadership, Uttar Pradesh has become a police raj. He added that the recent crackdown isn’t new. Similar violations have taken place in the past but unfortunately the mainstream media didn’t pay much attention.

Watch the interview to see what he had to say.