On 14 March 2022, when a Delhi sessions court announced that Ishrat Jahan will be awarded bail, the inmates in her barrack at Mandoli Jail were both ecstatic and sad. Happy, because she would get to go home after 25 months of imprisonment, and grieving because they would be losing their friend, companion and yoga teacher.
As she stayed up till late that night chatting with her inmates— who she now refers to as her second family—a group of them began applying mehendi on her feet.
"They said that when you had to return to jail on the 6th day after your wedding, your mehendi had still not faded. So now we want you to go back to your home with mehendi on," Ishrat said.
Ishrat Jahan, former Congress councilor from New Delhi's Khureji, was arrested on 26 February 2020 in connection with the Delhi riots.
Over a week after her release, Ishrat spoke to The Quint at her residence about her arrest and her experience in the prison.
Alienated in Jail, but Diary Entries Helped Ishrat Cope
"We never realise the importance of something as simple as sitting on a sofa. But when I came home and sat on our sofa, I had tears in my eyes. For 25 months, I just sat on a 5.5 feet carpet," Ishrat said.
The former Congress councilor said she's still not gotten used to home-cooked food, and is mostly continuing a liquid diet. "Because I used to mostly drink only milk in the jail," she said.
"No one can even understand just how different the food in jail is in comparison to the food we are used to eating at our homes," she added.
But it wasn't the physical challenges, but the emotional kind that gnawed at her.
"Initially, no prisoner would speak to me. Later when they realised I am an advocate myself, they began opening up to me. They told me that the jail administration has ordered them to stay away from me stating that “she is a terrorist and if you don’t stay from her, you will be punished.” It was very upsetting," she said.
Eventually, however, the prisoners took to Ishrat.
"I used to teach Yoga to the elders in jail. Although, in the name of security and safety, I would often not be allowed to stay in groups with other prisoners," she said.
"But still, we would get together at times to sing songs, and if someone’s bail would get rejected, we would cry together. We would read our charge-sheets together," Ishrat added.
What also helped Ishrat were reading books she was sent from home, and her regular diary entries, some times even in the form of letters to her husband.
'Didn't Know Any Co-Accused, Was Against Chakka Jam'
Ishrat's case is special for two reasons. One, because she is the first and so far only one of the prisoners arrested under UAPA for the Delhi riots to get bail by a trial court.
It was the Delhi High Court which had earlier granted bail to five persons in the UAPA case — activists Natasha Narwal, Devangana Kalita, Asif Iqbal Tanha, Safoora Zargar and Faizan Khan.
While coming out of Mandoli Jail, Ishrat was welcomed by a crowd, many of whom she didn't even personally know, she said. "It was heartwarming," Ishrat said.
While granting bail to Ishrat, the trial court observed: “she was neither physically present in Northeast Delhi for riots nor was she part of any group."
"Khureji, where I used to go for protests, wasn’t even affected by the riots. And the Khureji protest site was several kilometers away from Northeast Delhi where riots took place. The prosecution couldn’t prove I was anywhere close to the site of rioting in all of the 2 months of protests," Ishrat said.
In the chargesheet filed against Ishrat, the Delhi police had alleged that she was a "leading female face for mass mobilisation" and that she had a "mass base."
Speaking about the allegations, Ishrat said, "I won’t deny that I do have a mass base among the people here (in Khureji). I won the councilor elections from Khureji in 2012. People here like me because I worked very hard for them. But this is a positive thing, not negative."
Ishrat was a regular at the Khureji protest against the CAA. She would often address the crowds there.
"The protests had nothing to do with any politics. This was a special cause to save the Constitution," she said, adding that she even spoke against the approach of 'chakka jam' or road block.
"My lawyer even showed a video where I categorically spoke up against the chakka-jam (road block)," she said.
Ishrat further said that she was forcefully linked with the other accused.
“For the first year of imprisonment, due to the lockdown, our hearing used to be virtual. On the screen I used to see the names of the people who are my co-accused, but I didn’t know a single one of them personally. Then when the lockdown got removed, I met the co-accused for the first time, during the physical hearing. So how was this the “meeting of minds” if I never even met these people?,” she questioned.
A Wedding on Bail
But Ishrat's case is special for another reason. In June 2020, Ishrat was given 10 days of interim bail to have her wedding.
"Believe me, I spent those 10 days just dedicating my time to my family, and thanking God. I forgot about everything else, even though I knew I had to go back to jail very soon," she said.
The 10 days, however, flew by in the blink of an eye. She couldn't spend any time with her new relatives.
"I didn’t even have the time to look at my wedding pictures, which is every girl’s dream," she said.
On her first wedding anniversary, spent in jail, her fellow prisoners improvised a cake for her.
"We took a stack of bread, whipped up some coffee and put it all over the bread, and then decorated it with some jam," she said.
Prison Reforms and the Realisation of 'True Love'
For now, Ishrat has two priorities in mind. One, prison reforms.
“Just half an hour before I got bail, I had posted a letter to the administration, requesting that exhaust fans be added to our washrooms. There are no exhaust fans there, because of which the jail would stink so much,” she said.
“I really want to work on jail reforms. There are people in our jails who haven’t met their families in 5-6 years, they don’t have legal assistance, or if they work inside the jail, they are getting meagre salaries. There should be efforts towards rehabilitation,” she added.
The other thing that she wants to dedicate her time and energy to is spending time with her family.
“It will soon be 2 years to our wedding. And we haven’t even properly spent 2 days together. So I just want to give time to my husband,” Ishrat said.
She also spoke at length about her in-laws and their support.
“I had been charged with UAPA, but they still agreed for the wedding. In jail, I used to see women getting separated from their husbands because of the allegations levelled against them. But I was blessed in this regard. My in-laws gave me unconditional support,” she said.
Ishrat called this “true love.”
“It’s after getting imprisoned one understands who will really stand by you.”
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