Bengaluru: Children quizzed repeatedly in school for four hours on anti-CAA play

Bengaluru: Children at a Shaheen Primary and High School in Bidar in Karnataka have been getting used to a highly unusual routine. A police officer arrives in the afternoon.

This is followed by four or five hours of questioning. Their "crime" was to participate in a school play critical of the citizenship law, staged on January 21.

The children's interrogation continues even after the school's headmistress and a student's mother were arrested last week, the school administration has said.

A student's widowed mother was arrested on Thursday over charges of sedition for some lines the child said in the play.

Children from Classes 6, 7 and 8 who were in the play have been questioned four times already, the school administration said on Tuesday. They are asked - "who scripted the play?" and "Did the teacher instruct you?" Over and over again.

"I answered all their (police) questions but my mother was still arrested. I don't know when she will be back," says a 11-year-old student Ayesha (name changed), breaking into tears.

Her mother, Nazbunnisa, and a head-teacher in the school, Fareeda Begum, were arrested by police officials on January 30 on charges of sedition for staging a play which voiced dissent towards Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the new controversial citizenship law.

Ayesha has since been living with their neighbour as her mother is a widow and her close family members do not stay in Bidar.

"I have been staying with my neighbour since my mother was jailed. I have everything I need but I just want my mother to come back," Ayesha chokes up while saying this and looks away from this reporter.

Students in the school were asked to read up on the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), and two other countrywide exercises, the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and the National Population Register (NPR), and stage a play before an audience on January 21.

But after an activist from the Akhila Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) filed a complaint against the school management for allegedly 'insulting' Prime Minister Modi, police in Bidar charged the school management with sedition in an FIR registered at the Bidar New Town Police Station on January 26.

Police officials led by Basaveshwara Hira, Deputy Superintendent of Police, Bidar, have since turned up at the Shaheen school four times to question students involved in the play.

"We were asked about how we practised, and I replied that we didn't need to practise much since we just had to remember points," says Ayesha.

"Then the police asked us whether hitting the Prime Minister with a chappal is right or wrong? We replied that it was wrong.

Finally, I was asked if I would repeat what I said in the play, and I said no. But even though I truthfully answered their questions, my mother was arrested."