[Reader-list] Letter from Prashant Rahi on Imprisonment and Torture, and Appeal for Campaign Against UAPA January 29, 2014

[Asit Das]

Letter from Prashant Rahi on Imprisonment and Torture, and Appeal for
Campaign Against UAPA <http://sanhati.com/articles/9031/>

*January 29, 2014*

By Prashant Rahi    sanhati

Authors note: ALL QUERIES ABOUT MY LEGAL ISSUES AND NEEDS BE DIRECTED TO MY
ADVOCATE SHIV PRASAD SINGH, WHO IS AVAILABLE AT : Tel. +918303481839; Email
: shivpsingh at gmail.com
- PRASHANT RAHI

Dated : January 07, 2014

Dear friends,
Heart-felt greetings at the onset of yet another tumultuous years of
struggle for civil and democratic rights, which are increasingly threatened
the world over by police atrocities perpetrated here as a normal course,
and there as barbaric exceptions, in a setting of the yet retained post-
9/11 anti-terror laws in India and other parts, even though the U.S.
imperialists seem to be back-tracking on their aggressive invasions in Iraq
and Af-Pak! We, Indian activists, remain vulnerable, with none of the
Parliamentary political forces even bothering to promise to repeal the 2008
and 2004 amendments in our Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act - UAPA of
1967, which was indeed superfluous with the colonial Indian Penal Code
(IPC) already draconian enough to stifle any serious political dissent. My
arrest and torture in custody, as also that of Hem Mishra, the J.N.U.
student of Chinese, which so many of you have cared to express concern
about, according to newspaper reports, could be just the tip of an ugly
iceberg. Even so, you might need to be apprised of the facts of our cases,
and those of my ongoing Uttarakhand post-torture trial, so as to direct the
raging passions in more effective ways.

It is with this view that I am putting across the following facts regarding
what befell us:-

1. Aheri, where our case is registered as a Criminal Case No. 3017/2013,
with the charge-sheet yet to be submitted and not likely to be served until
6 months after our arrest, owing to the 2008 insertion of Section 43 (d),
with its Sub-section-2, in the UAPA, is a backward and remote interior of
Gadchiroli, where the state, with its heavy deployment of specialized
police and paramilitary forces and helicopter squadrons, appear to have got
an edge over the Maoist People's Liberation Guerilla Army, well entrenched
in expansive forests of South Chhattisgarh among the adivasi (aboriginal
tribes) peasants, across the Maharashtra-Chhattisgarh State border. Part of
Gadchiroli district is officially notified as a Police District, whereby
the usual District Administration, Judiciary and "Development Activities"
are controlled by police officials, who in turn move around in the towns
and roadside villages like an occupation army, the citizens compelled to
finance their pay packets, enhanced 150 percent as incentive, in addition
to out of turn promotions and other allowances, and overriding powers to
lord over the populace.

The "free press", even correspondents of reputed dailies, is a mere
subservient tool of the security forces, eager to serve the propaganda and
psychological needs of their war against "left-wing extremists", also
called Naxalites or Maoists, a war wherein the people's guerillas seldom
come face-to-face with the security forces, the latter victimizing the
villagers, among whom the former mingle, feed and organize; compelling
retired and weakened guerillas to defect (referred to, more often, as
"surrender"). The funds, another largesse borne by the citizens, at the
disposal of the police are enormous. Aheri, where we were forcefully and
illegally brought to by this very police force, is one of the bases of
Gadchirdi's famed counter-insurgency operations, which, in the wake of our
arrests, was lauded at a meeting of State Police Chiefs, chaired by the
Union Minister of Home Affairs, Sushil Kumar Shinde, as a "role-model" for
combat forces engaged in anti-Naxalite "area domination" tactics for the
country. My arrest hardly 10 days after Hem's may appear to many as a
well-scripted drama, climaxing in the conferring of that status upon
Gadchiroli, after news of "Maoist supporter" from afar being implicated
here had set the pace.

One would tend to believe that the Congress-led Governments of New Delhi
could have found it convenient to co-ordinate tacitly with police forces in
Uttarakhand and Maharashtra, both having Congress-led State Governments, as
also with some coverts, or semi-coverts, within apparently friendly forces,
to forcefully lead me or carry me to this part of the country, which could
not have been on my itinerary at this conclusive and crucial stage of my
2007 Uttarakhand case, Criminal Case No. 3222/2007, Sessions Trial No.
83/2008, registered at Nanakmatta Police Station in Udham Singh Nagar
district of that state. That too when I was awaited for the hearing of this
trial on September 2, 2013, and due to head for Uttarakhand!

2. At Aheri, I was first produced in a Magistrate Court on precisely that
day, the 2nd of September by the Investigating Officer (IO) of Cr. Case No.
3017/2013, Suhas Bawache, a Deputy Superintendent of Police.

3. I was shown arrested in the neighbouring Gondia district of Maharashtra
State.

4. Actually, I have never been to Gondia district, nor seen the spot of
arrest, as is claimed. Indeed, I had been abducted in the most innocuous
circumstances, far beyond, the State of Maharashtra, well before
September 2(the claimed date of my arrest in Gondia); forcibly thrust
into a
dark-coloured van bearing fake number plates and shaded glass for its
windows; and forced to travel with my abductors who turned out to be
employees of the Maharashtra Police. They had transgressed their specified
area of jurisdiction, with orders from their superiors to facilitate my
fake arrest, in gross violation of the Criminal Procedure Code (Cr. P.C.)
and specific directions on procedure for arrest issued by the Supreme Court
of India. I was driven over a full day and night, straight to Aheri Police
Station, with no one else being arrested along with me, having crossed
several district and State borders.

5. The IO, Suhas Bawache knowingly hoodwinked the Courts so that cognizance
be taken of my fake arrest and his allegations against me about a criminal
conspiracy (Section 120B, IPC) to commit some unlawful acts (Sec.13, UAPA),
as member of a terrorist organization (Sec. 20, UAPA), eliciting support
for the CPI (Maoist) (Sec. 39, UAPA).

6. Subsequently, at the end of November, 2013, around 90 days after my
arrest, Suhas Bawache submitted an interim report of his investigations to
the learned Court of the Principal District and Sessions Judge at
Gadchiroli, in a successful bid to seek extension by a further 90 days of
the period for submitting a charge sheet against me, failing which I could
be entitled automatically for release on bail under section 167, Cr. P.C.
The learned Judge heard my contention that the investigation was being
delayed deliberately on spurious grounds, my arguments having been given as
written 'Say' filed among the case record. However, the provisions under
Sec. 43(d) 2 of UAPA gave the IO the right to prolong my detention over a
period of 180 days without being served a charge-sheet.

7. The IO pleaded in his interim report that it was taking long to study,
and gather some incriminatory evidence against me, from the contents of a
16 GB memory card allegedly seized from Hem Mishra, and from 4 Terra Bytes
of data from the hard disc and other storage devices allegedly seized in
the second week of September from the residence of Dr. G.N. Saibaba, an
English Associate Professor at University of Delhi. He also sought time to
apprehend some alleged "absconders", such as Dr. Saibaba; two persons
alleged to have travelled, as Hem did and allegedly intended to, some
months ago; one Maoist leader named as Narmada Akka to whom Hem was
allegedly intending to deliver the 16 GB memory card; and the General
Secretary of the CPI (Maoist), to visit whom in the Abujhmaad stronghold of
the Maoist, Hem and I were allegedly "sent by Saibaba", in connection with
this case.

8. A similar 90 days extension had been permitted by the same Court to
submit a charge-sheet against Hem Mishra and his two alleged escorts, Pandu
Naroti and Mahesh Tirki, residents of a Gadchiroli village, all three
having been shown arrested at Aheri Bus Stand on August 22, 2013. The
interim investigation report submitted to the court by Suhas Bawache in
support of this extension plea was identical, in fact a true copy of that
submitted in my case a week later.

9. Thus, effectively, the IO has secured time until February to prepare his
charge-sheet against us, following which, as per the only modicum of
safeguards guaranteed by the UAPA, the sanctioning authorities of the
Maharashtra State Government and/or the Government of India would have to
conduct a review of the investigation, independent of Suhas Bawache and his
superior authorities of or above the rank of Deputy Inspector-general of
Police, before granting sanction in order to prosecute us. Once this
procedure is completed according to the specified process, and a valid Case
Diary is prepared by the IO, recording the procedure followed, even a
higher court would be obliged, as per the 2008 insertion into UAPA under
its Section 43 (d), Sub-section 5 to take an adverse view of our bail
petitions.

10. Should bail be denied, the circumstances of trials being conducted by
the Gadchiroli Sessions Court of incarcerated alleged extremists, meaning
UAPA detenues, are such that the chances of a fair trial would only be slim
and exceptional. This is so because of the current practice of conducting
trials by video conference, whereby the accused persons do not normally get
a change to interact with their defence counsel, least of all interact with
her/him with the due freedom and confidentiality.

11. The prevailing system of prisoners being visited by their lawyers,
relatives and friends is so full of hindrances and disturbances, far more
so for UAPA detenues, that it violates the very essence of the Maharashtra
Prison Act, which provides for considerable freedom and space to interact
with and receive a wide range of visitors, as would be necessary to
overcome our anxieties and tensions and maintain a normal and balanced
state of mind.

12. Incidentally, it would be far from the truth to state or presume that I
and my co-accused were not badly tortured by the IO, Suhas Bawache. All of
us accused were tortured in the most inhuman manner. Mr. Bawache personally
used brute force against me and the others, violated our minds and body,
abused us, tormented and harassed us all through the days and nights over
several weeks of our PCR, i.e. Police Custody Remand. Hem, Pandu, Mahesh,
who were actually picked up from different places at Ballarshah in
Chandrapur District of Maharashtra within the railway station premises
on August
20, where badly mauled during 2 days of their illegal custody prior to the
stipulated 24 hour period within which accused persons are required to be
presented before a judicial court.

13. None of the accounts of our interrogation during illegal and legal
custody of the police carried by the newspapers are true and complete. We
did not get any opportunity to freely and sufficiently interact with
journalists. Not even The Times of India could get free and sufficient
access to talk with me.

14. Apart from the Deputy Superintendent of Police, Suhas Bawache and his
subordinates who physically and mentally tortured me, Hem and the others,
senior officials like the Deputy Inspector-general of Police, Ravindra
Kadam; and an Inspector-general who called himself Anup Kumar were directly
responsible for the entire episode and for implicating me unlawfully and
for showing our arrests incorrectly and falsely.

15. There is not even an iota of truth in the claim that Vijay Tirki from
Kanker District of Chhattisgarh received me at Raipur in that State, and
thereafter escorted me up to a certain Devri-Chichgadh T-junction in
Gondia, Maharashtra, enroute to Abujhmaad.

16. The fact is that Vijay Tirki was arrested separately, somewhere in
Raipur, and he had no plan to escort me, nor did I approach him to be
escorted to any destination. The first time that I met a person by this
name from Kanker District of Chhatisgarh was several hours after I was
dumped into the Aheri Police Station around midnight of 1st/2nd September
2013, when he too was thrown inside. As has already been reported, I was
engaged in professionally translating some case papers for a lawyer; after
meeting another lawyer who was my source for those papers, I was to collect
some more papers from him shortly after the time of my abduction, and
before proceeding to return to Uttarakhand to be present at an important
hearing of my ongoing trial in Udham Singh Nagar District on September 2,
2013.

17. It was precisely on the basis of the above factual truth that I could
withstand all the coercion by Suhas Bawache and his superiors to make out a
fake confession about the imagined journey to Abjuhmaad, as per their will
and desire.

18. I am not aware of any personal or organizational relationship between
Hem Mishra and Dr. G.N. Saibaba, as is alleged. However, as far as I am
concerned, there was no such relationship between the English Professor or
his mass organization and me that he would "send" me somewhere, and I would
agree, or that he or his comrades would depute me with couriering, or any
task for that matter, and I would agree. In fact, the allegation that I saw
him a couple of days before my formal arrest is absolutely baseless. I
consider him and Hem mere acquaintances, not even friends of any
significance that would lend credibility to any police claims.

19. With that, let me come to my Uttarakhand case, and torture in 2007. As
is well-known I was living and working in Dehradun since 1991, and so was I
all of the 2 or 3 months prior to my arrest in December, 07. On the 17th of
December, I was picked up from a prominent street in broad daylight, close
to Ara Ghar, after being attacked by several men all of a sudden,
manhandled, blindfolded and carried away in a speeding car, first to a
forest in the neighboiring Haridwar district, beaten up with sticks all
through the first night, after which I collapsed. The next day, I was
shifted to a Provincial Armed Constabulary campus of the Uttarakhand Police
in Haridwar in a restricted part of Roshanabad, brought to a "PAC
Conference Room", where the blind-folding was first removed on the 18th
night. There, I was tortured and harassed continuously till the 20th in
various devious and inhuman ways, which I am omitting here to save space
and for decency's sake. On the 20th morning, I was again blindfolded, put
into a car and driven several hours to be brought to Udham Singh Nagar, and
hidden in a room of the residential quarters within the premises of
Nankmatta Police Station, some 350 km. to the east of Dehradun. There, I
was tortured by a different set of police personnel, until they could make
up a story to show my arrest on the 22nd. Till the 5 days and 5 nights that
elapsed after I had been picked up and illegally confined, I had not been
allowed even a wink's sleep. After informing my daughter Shikha Rahi, based
in Mmbai, of my arrest on the 22nd evening, I was produced at a
Magistrate's Court on the 23rd.

20. The arrest story was that I was accosted in the forests near Nankmatta
during a combing/search operation by a police party for a Maoist training
camp, as reported in a F.I.R. lodged on the 20th, around the time I was
brought to the police station premises from Haridwar, which 4 others, who
were with me, fled the scene. Later, I allegedly helped recover a broken
laptop, a pen drive and some printed material from the same forest (which I
had never seen before, nor was I taken out there then), and the IO wrote
out other cock and bull descriptions about an imagined 3-month long CPI
(Maoist) military training camp, and now all the cadres and military
trainers with their equally imaginary arms and ammunitions had vanished -
all except me (who was already in their custody on the date of filing the
FIR)!

21. A case was made out under the IPC Sections 121 (waging war or abetting
the waging of war against the state), 121A (conspiring against the state),
124A (sedition), 153B (threatening the preservation of the nation's unity
and sovereignty), 120B (committing the above offences as part of a criminal
conspiracy), and under the UAPA Section 20 (member of a terrorist
organization).

22. I could get bail only after 3 years and 8 months, that too, only
because the UAPA invoked against me and my co-accused was the 2004 version,
not the 2008 one. The others who were subsequently arrested from home, a
court premises and one from a railway station a year or so later, were
respectively, Gopal Bhatt, Dinesh Pandey and Chandrakala, all well-known
social activists of Uttarakhand. 3 others were proclaimed as absconders.
All the 3 who were arrested after me were released first, and then I too
was released on bail on August 21, 2011.

23. The case with Cr. Case No. 3222/2007 was taken up for trial 8 months
later, as S.T. No. 83/2008, and the trial has not yet concluded. Had I not
been framed up in another case, the Uttarakhand case could have ended (in
acquittals) latest by the end of 2013.

24. Ever since my incarceration at Central Prison Nagpur, I have not been
able to attend any of the trial hearings in Uttarakhand. The Maharashtra
Police refuses to provided me the necessary escort to travel to Uttarkhand,
this being one of the main reasons for the trial being held up these past 4
months. It is likely to be so for an indefinite or uncertain time period.

25. There would be calculations and speculations on the part of both the
police IOs, and indeed their superiors, as to how one case could be made
use of to lend weight and credibility to the other. On the basis of the
above series of facts, circumstances and observations that are humbly
placed before all of you, I would urge you, friends, to direct your
energies and passions now at the basic causes of the above tribulations,
rather than expecting the officials of the Indian state to take any serious
cognizance of your appeals not to torture Hem and me, to ensure a fair
trial, or to punish the officials responsible for my/our torture in
Maharashtra or in Uttarakhand State. Even if the issue be primarily of the
nature of civil and democratic rights, in other words, human rights, the
targets, in accordance with the basic causes of such adverse occurrences,
ought to be socio-political. It is the anti-people nature of the Indian
state, and its various organs that ought to be brought into question. As
the country goes to the polls to reconstitute its parliament, would it not
be pertinent to ask as to why no vote-garnering political campaign, not
even that of the "common man's" Aam Aadmi Party has an agenda to
dimilitarize the state's operations against its own people, and to reverse
this trend of the last 8 to 10 years, which has led to the incarceration of
not less than 3000 alleged Maoists, an overwhelming majority of them framed
up with fabricated charges and brutally tortured and inhumanly treated in
both police and judicial custody.

With these concerns, it would serve a larger cause if the thousands who
have reportedly expressed moral support to me and Hem Mishra would bombard
the powers -that- be in New Delhi, Mumbai, Dehradun, Raipur, Ranchi, Patna,
Kolkata, Lucknow, Chandigarh, Bhopal, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Bangaluru,
Bhubhaneshwar, Chennai, Thiruvananthapuram and Guwahati with millions of
letters and slogans to :-
1. Repeal the U.A.P.A. or at least withdraw its 2008 and 2004 amendments.
2. Withdraw the ban on organizations which are attempting to lend a voice
to the impoverished and deprived lot, irrespective of whether they resort
to counter-violence against state repression.
3. Redefine terrorism! Get out of the nomenclature imposed on the world by
the likes of Bush and Obama, and Putin and Angela, and Manmohan Singh and
Narendra Modi! Do not equate revolutionary violence with terrorism!
4. Release all the alleged Maoist prisoners incarcerated as a result of the
draconian laws and amendments, and all other innocents framed up for
political reasons and as part of the conspiracies of intelligence agencies,
the bosses of ATS', IBs and the NIA!
5. Stop forthwith government sanctioning of all prosecution of persons
accused under UAPA, especially those not active in combatant roles and
common villagers, adivasis and dalits, and ordinary women.
6. Ensure speedy trials for all UAPA accused. Summon prosecution witnesses
without delay.
7. Ensure production of all UAPA accused in their cases pending in courts
of various States and districts. Stop using "security reasons" as the
excuse to delay and deny trials.
8. Accord political prisoner status in all States on the lines of the West
Bengal Correctional Services Act.
9. Amend Jail Manuals in all States on the lines of the West Bengal
Correctional Services Act.
10. Do not adopt video conferencing as the means to conduct court trials.
Stop the practice forthwith, wherever in force.
11. Stop erecting barriers in the form of wire meshes, glass panes, etc. in
visitors' enclosures in prisons in the name of security. Let jail
interviews be held in a humane manner. Allow UAPA accused the right to
access the Press.
12. Implement forthwith the provisions of the International Covenants on
Civil and Political Rights, on Prisoners' Right, and on Detention Centres.

Let this be an open-ended campaign, and do keep me informed, please.

In Solidarity,
Prashant Rahi
Address for correspondence:
PRASHANT RAHI
UNDER TRIAL SECTION, BARRACK No. 8,
CENTRAL PRISON, NAGPUR-40020
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