Video Editor: Purnendu Pritam
A birthday ruined, a wedding anniversary spent alone - for journalists Prashant Kanojia and his wife Jagisha Arora, the struggle is far from over.
“It was my birthday on 18 August. We started the celebrations from the previous night when Prashant made mutton biryani for me. I didn’t know the next morning everything will be ruined.”
On 18 August, Prashant was arrested from his home in Noida for sharing a morphed image of a Hindutva leader on his social media profile. “ When we got the FIR copy, we found out that a sub-inspector had filed a case against Prashant for morphing a social media post of Sushil Tiwari. When we investigated, we realised that Prashant had already deleted the tweet,” Jagisha said.
Sushil Tiwari’s original post demanded that Islamic studies be removed from UPSC syllabus. But the picture shared, and then deleted, by Prashant read: “No Shudra, SC, ST or OBCs will be allowed inside Ram Mandir.” Kanojia tweeted with the caption: “According to Tiwari’s orders.”
Speaking to The Quint, Jagisha Arora asked why were different punishments being meted out to different people for the same crime.
“At a time when the spread of fake news is so rampant, mistakes can happen. But that doesn’t mean people should be arrested and kept in jail for 50 days. Why was no action taken on the other handles that shared the post or even against the one who actually morphed the image? Why is no action taken against Sushil Tiwari who continuously posts Islamophobic, casteist and sexist videos on his social media profile? “
‘Prashant Kanojia Was Targeted Because He is a Vocal Critic of the Govt’
Jagisha said, “Prashant Kanojia was targeted because he is very vocal about different issues, from Kashmir to Dalit atrocities to gender violence to mob lynching. He puts forward his opinions. He wants equality in society, wants to abolish caste. His arrest is a punishment for being a vocal critic of all these issues.”
In 2019, Kanojia was arrested for sharing a video of a woman who claimed that she had been video-calling chief minister Yogi Adityanath and that she wanted to marry him. Kanojia, a former reporter at The Wire, was arrested in April for “objectionable tweets” against PM Narendra Modi and CM Adityanath.
‘Received Rape and Death Threats, Had to Live in Fear’
After he was released from jail in 2019, lives were not the same for him and his family. Jagisha said, “After that arrest, more and more people came to know Prashant and even he started writing more vocally on several issues. There used to always be a sense of fear and anxiety because I knew that some people disagreed with Prashant. And their disagreement would often lead to death threats. They would even issue rape threats against me. They would abuse us. We faced terrible trolling even for uploading a simple photograph.”
‘Had to Fight Casteism to Get Married to Prashant, But His Love Made me Carry on’
From fighting casteism to get married to Prashant to spending days in anxiety without him, Jagisha says it is Prashant’s love and trust that keeps her going. She said, We are poles apart (as persons) but we both want an equal society, annihilate caste. We had an inter-caste marriage where my family was obviously against it. We had to elope to get married. I had uploaded a picture of us so I was told by my family to leave the house. “
“I can overcome all of this because his love, his trust and his care give me strength to fight on.”
‘Today it is Prashant, Tomorrow it can be You’
Asking for support, Jagisha said, “My last appeal to everyone is that today it is Prashant, tomorrow it can be them. The way this government is normalising arrests, we shouldn't let that happen. There is an attempt to silence the voice of dissent. There is an attempt to scare their families so much that they stop speaking up. We should all come together and fight this.”
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