Reports of police brutality emerge as authorities try to crush opposition to Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist legislation.
LUCKNOW, India — When Sadaf Jafar headed out with hundreds of others on Dec. 19 to join a demonstration against India's contentious new citizenship law, she told her children she would be home that evening.
She never made it back.
The 43-year-old actress and activist had been live-streaming video from the protest site, a bustling crossroads in Lucknow, on her Facebook page. But as the rally descended into chaos and Jafar pleaded with police to detain the violent protesters, officers instead grabbed her, the video shows before ending abruptly.
Perturbed by Jafar's disappearance, a family friend and fellow actor, Deepak Kabir, went to a police station to inquire about her whereabouts. But he also did not return. Both are now in jail in an attempted murder and assault of public servants investigation, according to police documents reviewed by The Washington Post. Two other prominent activists, S.R. Darapuri and Mohammad Shoaib, both in their 70s, were detained before the protest and are also in jail.
They are among 5,500 people seized by police in Uttar Pradesh state alone in recent weeks in an intensifying clampdown on dissent. Twenty-four people have been killed in protests across India, 19 of them in Uttar Pradesh.
