The Indian students in jail for ‘celebrating’ a Pakistan cricket victory

The students have been charged with ‘sedition’, a colonial era law that critics fear is being used to crush dissent and free speech. Sravasti Dasgupta reports

Pakistan’s captain Babar Azam plays a shot during the ICC mens Twenty20 World Cup cricket match between India and Pakistan on 24 October 2021 in Dubai (AFP/Getty)

For nearly 150 days, three young Kashmiri students have been languishing in a prison cell in northern India’s Uttar Pradesh state.

Their alleged crime? Celebrating India losing a cricket match to arch rivals Pakistan in October last year.

Arsheed Yousuf, Inayat Altaf and Showkat Ahmad Ganai are all in their early twenties, and attended the Raja Balwant Singh Engineering Technical College in Agra. They were arrested for sharing what the authorities have described as “anti-India” messages on WhatsApp after the match, a T20 World Cup fixture on 24 October which Pakistan won by 10 wickets.