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New Delhi: Three women from Kerala who were arrested in Uttar Pradesh, for showing allegedly false RT-PCR test results while trying to visit their incarcerated relatives, have finally made it back to their homes, after a month of being imprisoned.
Though the women managed to secure bail on October 23, The News Minute reported, they were finally released from prison only on October 31. They reached Cochin at 11:30 am on Monday (November 1).
The three women – Muhsina (31), her mother-in-law Naseema (62) and Haleema (65) – had been arrested on September 25. As The Wire reported then, the three had gone to meet their family members lodged in a prison in Uttar Pradesh in a UAPA (Unlawful Atrocities Prevention Act) case and were arrested on the charges of producing “fake” RT-PCR tests by the police.
The Lucknow additional sessions court, while granting the women bail, said there was no proof that they were positive for COVID-19 infection. “No previous criminal history of the accused has been filed by the prosecution,” the court continued.
Muhsina’s husband Anshad Badruddin and Haleema’s son Firoz Khan are members of the Popular Front of India (PFI) and have been in a Lucknow prison since February 2021.
The Uttar Pradesh prisons department has made it mandatory, from August onwards, for family members willing to meet prisoners to produce a negative RT-PCR test done 72 hours prior to the meeting. Although the women had carried the most updated test reports, according to family members in Kerala, they have still been arrested. As a result, the women could neither meet their loved ones lodged in jail nor safely return home. They were supposed to return to Kerala within two days.
According to The Telegraph, the women’s incarceration and the situation around it was made even more stressful because they do not speak or understand Hindi. “Some 30 armed police personnel came to our hotel and took us in their vehicle. We had no idea what was happening,” Naseema told the newspaper.