The video related to the hate speech delivered by Yogi Adityanath during the 2007 Gorakhpur communal violence can still be seen today.
An official at the Gorakhpur jail where he was imprisoned stated that he died due to his illness.
As soon as the new officer took charge, he reopened the case against Parvez Parwaz.
In 2020, a corrupt judge sentenced Parvez Parwaz to life imprisonment.”French filmmaker and national Valentin Henault was Parwaz’s co-inmate.
He recalled that he was cellmates with Parwaz and shared a reel on Instagram telling the critical condition of Parvez Parwaz.
By Sami Ahmad
LUCKNOW: “Now tell me, how should one fight the battle for justice?” On September 13, 2018, Parvez Parwaz, a senior journalist and social worker from Gorakhpur, asked this question in a Facebook post, and without receiving an answer, he departed from this world from inside a prison on October 11, 2026.
Seventy-two years old Parvez Parwaz, a resident of Turkmanpur in the Rajghat area of Gorakhpur, committed the “crime” of initiating a legal battle against hate speech delivered by Yogi Adityanath, then a Member of Parliament from Gorakhpur and later Chief Minister. The video related to the hate speech delivered by Yogi Adityanath during the 2007 Gorakhpur communal violence can still be seen today. His gleeful acceptance of a similar ‘confession’ can be watched in the programme Aap ki Adalat hosted by Rajat Sharma.
The most tragic aspect of Parvez Parwaz’s legal battle was that instead of listening to his plea, the Samajwadi Party government of Akhilesh Yadav created such hurdles that the case against Yogi Adityanath could not move forward. And when Yogi Adityanath became the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, not only did he have this case withdrawn along with other cases filed against him, but his police also arrested Parvez Parwaz on September 25, 2018, on serious charges like gang rape, even though the earlier police station head (SHO) had dismissed the matter as baseless due to a lack of evidence.
On July 30, 2020, a court sentenced him and his co-accused Jumman Baba to life imprisonment in this case. When he was arrested on this allegation, he was around 64 years old. Following this, he could not get justice from the higher courts either, and while waiting for it, he passed away from this world.
An official at the Gorakhpur jail where he was imprisoned stated that he died due to his illness. His friends say that the reality is that he lost the battle of his life and the court due to the illness of injustice within Indian democracy. Reports indicate that he had undergone eye surgery a few days prior and was suffering from multiple ailments, including diabetes and high blood pressure.
What has been less discussed in the news is that in May 2023, the Allahabad High Court granted Parwaz bail in this gang rape case, but hearings on his appeal against the conviction handed down by the lower court kept getting adjourned repeatedly, preventing him from obtaining justice. On the other hand, the administration kept him imprisoned inside the jail on some other charges, meaning he could not walk out of captivity despite being granted bail. The disease of Indian democracy that Parvez Parwaz fell victim to can be understood from these words he wrote on September 13, 2018:
“One society bestows the highest seat of power upon an individual who continuously persecutes the Muslim community and is accused of grave criminal incidents, while on the other hand, the Muslim community reduces a weak human being like me, who fights against falsehood (baatil), to a beggar. The matter does not end here; an individual from within the Muslim community itself (who is the president of the managing committee of Dargah Hazrat Mubarak Khan Shaheed Waqf No. 151, Gorakhpur), becoming a snake in the sleeve and falling prey to the intoxication of his Pharaoh-like arrogance, used a 45-year-old characterless woman, who sells halwa and paratha at the dargah, to file a fake gang-rape case. Through the police, he engineered my character assassination and tried to have me sent to jail.
This is my destiny….
Now tell me, how should the battle for rights be fought…?”
Parwaz’s friends and colleagues also stated that his conviction and death were actually a political vendetta exacted by Chief Minister Adityanath against someone who had accused him while he was an MP, and that the opposition and the courts did not stand by his side.
Lucknow-based lawyer and human rights activist Mohammad Shoaib has alleged that the death of Parvez Parwaz, who was imprisoned in Gorakhpur jail, does not seem natural. He stated that an impartial investigation into Parvez’s death by an independent agency is essential.
Senior journalist Ajit Sahi wrote upon his death, “Whenever Yogi Adityanath is put on trial for all his crimes, I am certain that the crime of Parvez Bhai’s murder will also be included in this trial.”
In his Facebook post about Parvez, he wrote, “I met Parvez Bhai for the first time in 2017 by visiting Gorakhpur. Ten years before my meeting, Parvez Bhai had filed a case against Adityanath. Adityanath was the Lok Sabha MP from Gorakhpur at that time, and in January 2007, during a public rally in Gorakhpur, he spewed venom and called for Muslims to be killed. Parvez Bhai had a CD of Adityanath’s speech. That speech was the sole piece of evidence.”
He wrote further, “For years, every government in Uttar Pradesh pressured Parvez Bhai to drop the case. The governments of Mulayam Singh Yadav, Mayawati, and then Akhilesh Yadav- all three tried their utmost to protect Adityanath. Judges intentionally kept giving date after date in this case, and the trial could not even crawl forward.”
Regrettably, while the court had questioned Parwaz’s income, asking how he was even fighting the case, Ajit Sahi wrote on the other side, “Before filing this case, Parvez Bhai used to earn a modest living as a mofussil journalist and run his household. After filing the case, even that income dried up. When I went to Gorakhpur to report on this case, I met Parvez Bhai on several occasions. Parvez Bhai was approaching seventy years of age. He was exhausted from carrying the burden of this case, but he was not ready to admit defeat. Despite pressure from the government, the BJP, the RSS, the DM, the administration, and the police, Parvez Bhai remained fearless and stuck to the case.”
One can also gauge how the head of a government misuses his position in this case. Ajit Sahi writes, “Then, in the 2017 Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, the BJP won, and Adityanath became the Chief Minister. As soon as he became Chief Minister, Adityanath had the case against him withdrawn. Parvez Bhai filed an appeal against this. Corrupt judges of the Allahabad High Court dismissed the appeal. Just a few months after this, an elderly woman in Gorakhpur accused Parvez Parwaz of rape. The police investigated and submitted a report stating that the accusation was baseless. The investigation revealed that Parvez had never even met that woman.”
“Angered, Adityanath changed the investigating officer. As soon as the new officer took charge, he reopened the case against Parvez Parwaz. In 2020, a corrupt judge sentenced Parvez Parwaz to life imprisonment.”
French filmmaker and national Valentin Henault was Parwaz’s co-inmate. He spent a month imprisoned in Gorakhpur Jail in 2023 after being arrested while participating in a peaceful protest led by Dalit women. He recalled that he was cellmates with Parwaz and shared a reel on Instagram telling the critical condition of Parvez Parwaz. He recalled that Parwaz was severely ill, could barely speak, and struggled significantly even with basic physical actions like walking and eating. Henault demanded that Yogi Adityanath should have been in jail, and not Parwaz. Parwaz is not in jail now…He is out of jail, dead in a democracy which many believe is moving fast toward the fate of Parwaz and many like him.
