Sidhique Kappan: Jailed and 'tortured' for trying to report a rape

On the morning of 5 October last year, I headed to a village in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh to cover what had come to be known as "the Hathras case".

A few days earlier, a 19-year-old Dalit woman had died after she was allegedly gang-raped by four of her upper-caste neighbours in the village of Bhulgarhi in Hathras.

The story of the brutal assault, the woman's death and a forced cremation in the middle of the night by the police without her family's consent had made headlines around the world.

At around 10 in the morning, I reached the young woman's home and met her grieving family - relatives and neighbours who told me about a pretty teenager with a shy smile and long dark hair.

They told me about the wounds inflicted on her body and the callous manner in which the police and the government had treated her in life and death.

On the same morning, Sidhique Kappan, a 41-year-old journalist for the Malayalam-language news portal Azhimukham, also set out for Bhulgarhi, travelling from Delhi where he had been based for nine years.But his journey turned out to be very different to mine.

Mr Kappan was arrested with three other men in a car about 42km (26 miles) short of Hathras. Last week, he completed his 150th day in jail.

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