On March 23, The Observer Post reported on the arrest of Jamia Millia Islamia student Hazrat Parwana. Delhi Police had arrested Parwana on Thursday, March 20, in connection with a scuffle that broke out during Diwali in October 2024, allegedly instigated by ABVP-YUVA Jamia, a Hindu right-wing group.
On Saturday, March 22, Hazrat was granted bail by the Saket Court and released from Tihar Jail late at night. In conversation with The Observer Post, he recounted his ordeal, describing how he was assaulted by the Delhi Police while in custody for reasons such as saying “Palestine Zindabad.”
A third-year undergraduate student of Sanskrit and a leader of AIMIM’s student wing, Hazrat was arrested from Gate No. 18 of the university and taken to the Jamia Nagar Police station.
On the day of an Iftar gathering at Jamia, Hazrat accompanied his father, brother, and two cousins to the campus on March 20. He stated that since the day the police asked him to get his bail revoked, saying that they won’t be doing anything with him, there had been no further communication or developments—he had not received any warrant or notice.
“I didn’t expect they would arrest me from outside the campus, without any notice or through formal procedure. It was rather an abduction, not arrest,” Hazrat said.
At around 7:30 PM, Hazrat was taken to the Jamia Nagar Police station, where he was “beaten for around half an hour”. “They beat and tortured me with sticks, pipes, and thrashed me with fists. They put me in a room, laid me down, with one policeman sitting on my back, one clasping my head down to the floor, while 4 others thrashed me until my legs turned sore”, Hazrat told The Observer post.
While beating him, Hazrat said that “they said ‘khaate yahaan ka ho, gaate wahan ka ho’ (You eat from here, but sing for them), ‘Bachalo Filasteen ko bacha sako to’ (Save Palestine if you can) while they kept beating him. I totally knew it was normal of them to call me a ‘Jihadi, Aatankwadi, Pakistani’”.
Then, the Policemen who were beating him forced him to say “Filasteen Murdabad”, but Hazrat resisted. “I was beaten brutally, blood clots had already formed by then in my legs and body, but I refused to give in”, he said.
Hazrat shared that as the Investigation Officer arrived, he was let go of by the 6 Policemen, as the IO asked them why they beat him in his absence.
At around 11 PM at night, he was taken to AIIMS for medical checkup. The next day, on March 21, he was produced in court. The same day, at 5 PM, he was shifted to Tihar.
On March 22, he was released from the Tihar Jail after the Saket Court granted him bail.
“You can’t bear even a day of torture, the Tihar ruins your life, your career. Even a single night or day feels like time has been stretched,” Hazrat said.
The case dates back to the evening of October 22, 2024, during Diwali. The Rashtriya Kala Manch (RKM), a wing of the RSS-backed Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), had organized a rangoli-making event on campus. While the event was underway, outsiders affiliated with ABVP—including senior BJP leaders, RSS cadres, and Bhanu Pratap Singh, a former Delhi University Students’ Union candidate—entered the university premises. The administration neither verified their ID cards nor intervened in a timely manner.
Hazrat told The Observer post that students were engaged in making rangoli, while he was shooting a video of them celebrating. “They had the permission between 04:00-06:00, for two hours. I was standing behind the gates of Gulistan-e-Ghalib, when I saw Bhanu Pratap and ABVP members arrive at the campus Gate No. 7 at around 07 PM,” he said.
Suddenly, he said “they started shouting slogans of ‘Jai Shri Ram’ and ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’ at around 7:15 PM, within minutes of arriving. “I didn’t interrupt them, however, as students learnt the Bhanu and others were creating a ruckus around and inside the campus, I saw 15-20 students moving towards the gate from the Ibn-e-Sina academy,” he said.
There were Muslim students, who after witnessing alarming and deliberate attempts to provoke chaos by the outsiders, leading to triggering a scuffle in the campus, raised slogans of “Allahu Akbar” and “Filasteen Zindabad” in resistance.
“I, too, raised the slogans of Filasteen Zindabad”, Hazrat says, after he witnessed ABVP members attempting to disrupt harmony in the campus.
While the incident was going on, Hazrat said that the Delhi Police was stationed outside the gate, while the Proctor and campus security “became part of the spectacle, watching as the outsiders created chaos.”
ABVP invited outsiders through Gate No. 7, endangering student safety and triggering scuffles, as we reported previously, while the Jamia administration singled out Hazrat deliberately. “Slogans of Jai Shree Ram were raised exactly as the azaan was going on, deliberately provoking students,” Hazrat said.
Subsequently, an FIR was registered under the Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita (BNS), 2023, invoking Section 299 (deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings) and Section 3(5) (joint criminal liability for individuals acting with a common intention). Yet, no action was taken against those responsible for the violence. The FIR named 32 people—all the students booked were Muslims. The complainant alleged that Hazrat Parwana was the “main conspirator”.
Filed on October 25 by Rahul Tiwari of the Jamia Millia Alumni Association of Minorities (JMI AAM), the FIR accused Hazrat and others of “disrupting prayers, vandalizing rangoli designs, and extinguishing lit diyas, displaying utter disregard for the sanctity of the occasion and the cultural sentiments of those involved” during Diwali celebrations on campus.
Anjan Azad, a student Activist and member of AIRSCO Jamia, told us that the administration had deliberately singled out Hazrat, making him the conspirator in front of Delhi Police. “They targeted him specifically, while conveniently claiming ignorance about who else was involved,” he said.
The complaint claimed that the students “raised slogans like ‘Allahu Akbar’ and ‘Palestine Zindabad,’ attacked and threatened them, warning them never to celebrate any Hindu festival on campus.”
Hazrat said that the target was orchestrated, to spew institutional attacks on him as a Muslim student associated with Jamia as a punitive measure to target a minority institution.
“They made me a main conspirator alone, despite everything being known,” he told The Observer Post. “I approached my lawyers, knowing that if I’m arrested or attempts unfold to target me in future, they would take me in remand. I feared the everyday criminalization that Muslims have been subjected to understand various pretexts, so I decided to get an anticipatory bail”, he said. He had subsequently joined the investigation two weeks ago.
“They told me to get the anticipatory bail revoked, assuring me, ‘We won’t do anything to you. We won’t do anything bad,’” Hazrat said, according to Investigation Officer Yad Ram Yadav.
However, as he refused to get his anticipatory bail revoked, the concerned Investigation team got his bail dismissed by the Saket Court on March 12, Hazrat said. “I didn’t even know about it, I had gone home”.
Furthermore, The Observer Post has learnt that Hazrat was hospitalized after being released. Additionally, he suffered injuries in his back, legs, and face due to harsh beatings by the Delhi police personnel at the Jamia Nagar Police station.
(Syed Affan is a writer and Journalist based in Delhi. His reportage focuses on Human rights, Land Conflicts, Policy)
