I struggled, says Siddique Kappan after coming out of jail

Kappan and three others were arrested in October 2020 while they were going to a UP town

Press Trust of India

Lucknow: “I struggled,” Kerala journalist Siddique Kappan said minutes after he walked out of jail on Thursday to camera crews, a small curious crowd and to his wife and teen son, waiting patiently, just as they had for the more than two years since he was imprisoned on his way to Hathras. The relief was writ large on their faces but so was the pain.

Kappan and three others were arrested in October 2020 while they were going to the Uttar Pradesh town where a Dalit woman died allegedly after being raped. They were accused of trying to instigate violence over the death of the Hathras woman.

“I am coming to Delhi. I have to stay there for six weeks,” Kappan told PTI “I struggled more,” he laughed when asked how life had been in jail without saying anything more. In his two and a half years in jail, his mother died. “Her name was Kadijah. She is not there to see Kappan coming home,” Kappan’s wife Raihana said.

“The Supreme Court granted bail in the UAPA case and his innocence was revealed. Two and a half years is not a short time. We have experienced a lot of pain and suffering. But I am happy that justice, though belated, has been served,” she told PTI.

“I repeat that Kappan is a media person,” Raihana stressed. The couple has three children — Muzammil (19), Zidhan (14) and Mehnaz (nine). “Our children are waiting to welcome him home. Their happiness was taken away. Can they forget their father?”