Implicated in a false case by the CBI just because I am a journalist working for Tehelka, I am suffering imprisonment for the past month.
I was sent to two jails and subjected to sub-human conditions. I helplessly watch CBI sleuths connive with the jail authorities to leave no stone unturned to put me under all sorts of mental and physical pressure. On the first day in prison, they stripped me naked in front of the jailor's office, with 10 staff members laughing, and a crowd of prisoners watching.
Their reason for stripping me in front of the crowd: he is a Tehelka journalist. Let's see what he is hiding.
This was done after they had kept me in custody for 27 hours, and frisked me many times. Even as tears rolled down my face, they laughed.
The CBI officials did this after physically torturing me, and threatening me. Mercifully, the honorable judge at Saharanpur somehow saw through their designs and ordered that two of my lawyers be with me throughout the period of CBI custody, albeit at a visible distance.
Even after arresting me and getting nothing, they are playing games to put me under pressure. They don't allow me to talk to the media. When they transferred me to the Ghaziabad court, they kept me inside a suffocating hawalat and not near the judge's room where the other accused are kept, to keep me away from the media.
The only reason I am suffering is because I am a journalist from Tehelka, which exposed corruption in high places. The government's invisible hand is present in all this. The arrest of Shankar Sharma and Aniruddha Bahal is testimony to the fact. The CBI should be asked if they have arrested a single poacher of hundreds of elephants? Did they investigate a single case of the Gujarat carnage in which 2,000 human beings lost their lives? Will they investigate the petrol pump scam? How long will they curtail my freedom? I am on a hunger-strike to protest against their barbarism. I will carry on with it till I get justice. I am fully determined.
I am inside a dingy barrack along with 250 prisoners (many of them murderers). The barrack is meant for 60 people. The fan doesn't run during the afternoon, it's unbearable. Cockroaches and insects crawl over my body when I go to sleep along with addicts carrying all kind of diseases. Will the CBI cure me of any disease that I might get infected with here?
Where is the tape which the Saharanpur police claimed to have recovered from the other accused (which they allege is the copy of the tape given to me)? Why didn't the CBI release it or produce it in the court? They raided my residence and office and recovered nothing. And still they don't want me to be released on bail?
"Jail is an exception, bail is a rule," said the Supreme Court Bar Association chairman recently. Am I a habitual offender? Am I a hardened criminal? Do I have a criminal past? Why can't I get bail? Because the CBI prosecutor seeks adjournments deliberately when my bail hearing comes up.
They implicated me in a false case. The UP government issued a notification within 24 hours and so did the ministry of home affairs! They broke all records with the speed with which the case was transferred to the CBI.
Am I such a danger to society that I can't even get bail?
This is an edited extract from a letter sent to journalists and MPs.