Noida: The lawyer of a labour activist arrested for her alleged role in the Noida industrial workers’ violence on April 13 has accused police personnel of trying to plant evidence during a visit to their house in Delhi’s Chhatarpur soon after her arrest.Srishti, a Visva Bharati University graduate, was arrested from Botanical Garden on April 11, two days before a violent protest by industrial workers demanding higher minimum wages, and has been named in all 11 FIRs linked to the unrest. She faces charges of arson, vandalism, attempt to murder, damage to public property and inciting violence. Srishti was granted bail in six cases, two of them from Allahabad High Court, but remains behind bars with proceedings on in the other cases.CCTV footage purportedly from Srishti’s house surfaced on social media on Wednesday, appearing to show police personnel trying to put her phone, which they had already seized, there. The personnel, who had taken Srishti along with them, allegedly aborted the bid once they noticed the CCTV camera. In another recording, part of the same video clip, an unidentified person in plain clothes is seen trying to damage the CCTV camera. Both the recordings are from April 25.The footage was shared by Campaign for Release of workers and activists of Noida (CaRWAN), a rights advocacy and solidarity group, and was also shared by lawyer Prashant Bhushan on X.Srishti’s lawyer Lokendra Nagar claimed the footage establishes how police have tried to frame her. “We have been asserting in the court that she was picked up from Botanical Garden metro station around 7 pm by police, along with two other activists, Manisha Chauhan and Rupesh Roy, but police have been trying to present a different story in their chargesheet,” he said. “To support their narrative, police are trying to show that they had recovered her mobile phone from her residence in Chhatarpur, which Srishti shares with her sister and brother-in-law.”The lawyer alleged that when Srishti was taken into police remand, her sister and brother-in-law anticipated a police raid, installed CCTV cameras and left for Burari. “Police took Srishti to her home on April 25 to plant her smartphone, only to be caught by surprise seeing CCTVs installed. So they made an entry in the case diary claiming they went to Srishti’s home but couldn’t find her phone,” Nagar claimed.He added that another case diary entry in the same FIR claims that on April 26, police took Srishti to SNC company near Phase 2 mandi and recovered a bag from the bushes containing her smartphone and a banned book.UP Police issued a clarification, saying that Srishti was taken into police custody in line with a court order and that a search was conducted at her residence following all legal procedures, in the presence of the accused and independent witnesses.DCP Central Noida posted on X that the mobile phone and diary visible in the video belonged to the investigating officer, who had kept them in a separate location to ensure impartiality. “It is noteworthy that the search was completed in the presence of the accused and independent witnesses. The search memo of the aforementioned search clearly states that no mobile phone or diary was recovered from the alleged location. In the absence of evidence in their favour, the accused are attempting to mislead the honourable court and the public by waging a misleading propaganda war,” the statement in Hindi read.CaRWAN, however, questioned the police’s version and asked them to release the names of independent witnesses.
