Concealed under a burqa, 24-year-old Ima Jahan stands outside Bareilly’s Kotwali police station carrying her seven-month-old daughter on one shoulder and a bag full of food on the other. She has been here for four days now. Whenever a policeman comes out for a stroll, she runs towards him with the same question: “When will you release my husband?” Jahan says she has been asking them this since Friday (September 26, 2025), when her husband Guddu, 25, was arrested by the Bareilly police in Uttar Pradesh. A constable shoos her away, saying only his seniors can answer her query. “Can you please let me give him some food? He is hungry,” she pleads as the constable hops on his bike to leave.

Guddu was one of 81 people sent to jail in connection with the violence that broke out after Friday prayers on September 26. It was the fallout of a row that began over an illuminated board that proclaimed ‘I love Muhammad’ during a Barawafat procession in Kanpur, about 260 km from Bareilly, on September 4.

Some people confronted members of the Muslim community, saying the board was a new element in the traditional procession. Guidelines issued by the State government emphasise that only traditional celebrations can be held in religious processions related to festivals. No tweaks are permitted in order to maintain law and order in a State that has seen religious strife. While matters were settled then, they escalated into a row.

Tauqeer Raza Khan, chief of the Ittehad-e-Millat Council, a regional political party, called for a protest against the Kanpur incident after Friday prayers in Bareilly on September 26. Mr.