KOCHI: Salmaan Mohammed still wakes up in his sleep haunted by the thought of policemen in mufti barging into his bedroom and forcing him out of the house in the dead of the night. Seven years have passed since the police nabbed him from his house at Peroorkada in Thiruvananthapuram on August 20, 2014, after he was charged with sedition for not standing up in a cinema hall when the national anthem was played. But the 32-year-old is yet to come out of the trauma.
“I still wake up in the middle of the night shouting for help. The horrifying incident pushed me into depression. I never expected that I would be booked under Section 124 (A) of IPC. I did it in a spur-of-the-moment’s decision and never thought it would end up like this,” said Salmaan.
“They dragged me out of my bed in the night and took me to a place. I can still see that fear in the eyes of my parents when they arrested me. The police did not even bother to tell my parents where I was being taken. My father struggled to find where I was put up,” said Salmaan, who is now planning to do a PhD in Philosophy.
With Supreme Court putting a pause on the sedition law till the Centre takes a call on it, Salmaan’s case has propped up again for a debate as he is still fighting the sedition charges at a magistrate court in Thiruvananthapuram. Salmaan had to spent 35 days in jail and he was granted bail by the Kerala High Court granted on September 22, 2014.
Lawyer K S Madhusoodanan, who filed his bail application in the High Court, said Salmaan’s case is a glaring example of how Section 124 (A) can be misused. “There are other IPC Sections for offences related to showing disrespect to national anthem and national flag. Though the police invoked Sections 2 and 3 of Prevention of Insult to National Honour Act, they also added sedition charges. We don’t know on what grounds did the police invoke sedition charges against him for the particular offence,” he said.
Social critic and CDS faculty J Devika, who was part of the then campaign seeking justice for Salmaan, said: “In this case, Section 124 (A) was used to silence an angry immature young man who in a fit of rage reacted to a norm imposed upon him.”
“We all undergo a rebellious state of mind at a particular age. As an activist, Salmaan used to take up different issues and react to them. His attitude and approach to issues have irked many. Whatever be, he didn’t deserve to be put behind bars for an act which he did in a spur of a moment,” she added.