On a humid afternoon in July, Mohammad Shahid can barely be heard over the noise in the bylanes of Jaffrabad as life continues undimmed. Occasionally Shahid turns his face to the wall. He is telling me about the 17 months that he spent in a Delhi jail before he was eventually charged with participating in the riots in the northeast of the city in February 2020, while then U.S. President Donald Trump was on a two-day visit to India.  

So incensed were the Delhi Police by this coincidence that it noted in the chargesheet that there “could not have been a greater international embarrassment for the Government of India than to have communal riots raging in the national capital while a visit by the U.S. President was underway.” The riots began because supporters of the government’s arguably Islamophobic Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) — which essentially enables a path to Indian citizenship for illegal immigrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, as long as they are not Muslim — attacked protestors.

Many observers alleged that the police aided and abetted the Hindutva mob. Fifty-three people, mostly Muslim, were killed in the violence and many hundreds were injured and displaced. Weeks after the riots, bodies were still being found in open drains.   

Shahid has been home for about a year now, waiting for his trial to begin. He is one of 2,456 people who have been arrested, though nearly half have yet to be charged with any crime.