[Reader-list] Narratives of Police Illegality anand teltumce

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 Narratives of Police Illegality
 Vol - XLIX No. 28, July 12, 2014 | Anand Teltumbde
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All the so-called Maoist cases, including those of radical political
activists Sudhir Dhawale and Arun Ferreira, present a pattern which clearly
brings out the mala fide intention of police to hold some selected persons
in jail for as long as possible and thereby terrorise others from following
in their footsteps. In law, the courts are supposed to punish the guilty,
but in these instances the accused are already punished by the police even
before their guilt is established.

Anand Teltumbde (anandraj at gmail.com) is a writer and civil rights activist
associated with the Committee for the Protection of Democratic Rights,
Mumbai.

Sudhir Dhawale, a well-known social activist, who was arrested by the
police for his alleged links with the Maoists, was released from Nagpur’s
central prison after being acquitted of all the charges by the Gondia
sessions court on 22 May 2014. He was in jail for 40 months. Along with
him, the eight other co-accused persons were also acquitted. In 2005, quite
like Dhawale, the dalit poet Shantanu Kamble was arrested on similar
charges, tortured over a period of 100 days before he got bail. He now
stands cleared of all charges by the court. The radical political activist,
Arun Ferreira, was confined in jail for more than four years, tortured and
harassed, repeatedly rearrested in fresh cases after being acquitted in the
earlier ones, before he finally got bail in the last case. The lesser known
cases of arrests of 12 members of the Deshbhakti Yuva Manch of Chandrapur
in January 2008 and the arrest of Bandu Meshram from Nagpur on very similar
charges also come to mind. They all have been acquitted but not before
torture and harassment at the hands of the police and humiliation of jail
over periods ranging from one to three years. One is also reminded of the
arrest of Anil Mamane and two others when they were selling books at
Deekshabhoomi in Nagpur in October 2007.

There are scores of other cases from remote rural areas wherein young women
and men, incarcerated in jails, were arrested on vague charges of being
Maoists, many without even the charges being framed, and nobody to provide
legal and other aid, helplessly facing ruin with the passage of time.

*Procedural Injustice*

udhir Dhawale has been a political activist right from his college days in
Nagpur when he was part of the Vidyarthi Pragati Sanghatana (VPS), a
radical students’ organisation in the 1980s. He never hid his ideological
leanings and association with the mass organisations that professed
Marxism-Leninism, known loosely as Naxalism, and now as Maoism. But he
denied having connection with the Maoist party or its activities, least of
all, the violent actions committed by it. After coming to Mumbai, he became
active in the cultural movement and took a leading part in organising an
alternative Vidrohi Marathi Sahitya Sammelan in 1999 in protest against the
mainstream literary gathering, which is hugely sponsored by the state. This
initiative took the form of Vidrohi Sanskrutik Chalwal, with its own
bimonthly organ, *Vidrohi*, of which Dhawale became the editor. Soon
*Vidrohi* became a rallying point for radical activists in Maharashtra. He
drew on his literary flair in writing pamphlets and books to propagate
revolutionary ideas in support of the ongoing struggles of adivasis and
dalits. He played a leading role in the foundation of Republican Panthers
on 6 December 2007, which identifies itself as “a movement for the
annihilation of caste”. He was active in the statewide protests that
erupted after the gory caste atrocity at Khairlanji, which was
irresponsibly termed by the home minister of Maharashtra as instigated by
the Naxalites. Dhawale was placed on the police scanner since then. At the
personal level, he lived a spartan life devoted to these activities, which
was supported by his wife, his comrade in VPS, who worked at the Dr
Babasaheb Ambedkar Memorial Hospital, Byculla in Mumbai.

After his arrest in Wardha, where Dhawale was invited to speak at a dalit
literary conference, the police raided his house in Mumbai in a manner as
though he was a dreaded terrorist. His wife, Darshana, and children had to
undergo considerable hardship and humiliation. The education of his
children was completely disrupted; his son failed in the 12th standard
board exam. As regards a case of association on the basis of some statement
by some accused person or the literature recovered from his house, evidence
of this kind has been deemed inadequate in Supreme Court judgments in
several cases. However, with an alibi that the courts would decide upon
value of the evidence provided, the police irresponsibly persisted with its
charge that he was involved in unlawful activities and Maoist conspiracy.
The courts however acquitted him, trashing the police case, but to what
avail? The police’s objective of punishing Dhawale and terrorising many
activists like him was accomplished.

*A Human Tragedy*

There have been scores of cases before and after Dhawale’s arrest; Arun
Ferreira’s is by far the most revealing of those featured in the media.
Like Dhawale, people who knew Ferreira were outraged by the police charge
and came forward to defend him until Senior Superintendent of Police Yadav,
the then head of the Anti-Naxalite Cell had threatened that even they would
be arrested as Naxal supporters. Ferreira underwent all kinds of torture
and harassment, including a narco-analysis test, the result of which
created a small stir as he had stated that Bal Thackeray was financing
Naxalite activities in Maharashtra. Going by the authenticity which the
police ascribe to narco-analysis, it should have at least interrogated
Thackeray. Ferreira’s revelation under narco-analysis was far more
authentic in terms of the police’s own schema than that of some accused
person taking the very name that the police wanted him/her to state during
interrogation. No charge against Ferreira could stick but police still
managed to keep him in jail for over four years. Ferreira has sued the
state for infringing his fundamental rights to liberty and freedom of
movement, and demanded an apology and compensation of Rs 25 lakh. Others
simply have to swallow the injustice.

The other eight persons, all dalits, acquitted along with Dhawale were also
arrested on trumped up charges and were made to undergo torture,
harassment, humiliation, and imprisonment. There are now 44 persons with a
Maoist tag in Nagpur jail, seven of whom are women. Of course, they include
the relatively recent inmates, Hem Mishra, Prashant Rahi and the Delhi
University professor G N Saibaba. The latter cases were flashed in the
media and the police’s actions were widely condemned. But the others are
nameless and faceless adivasi youth from the interiors of Gadchiroli
district of Maharashtra, most of them having been rounded up in the wake of
some Maoist action nearby.

Two adivasi youth have been the oldest inmates of the Nagpur Central
Prison. One is Ramesh Pandhariram Netam, 26, an activist of a student
organisation, who is in jail for the last six years. His parents were
reportedly activists in the mass movements identified as Maoist-inspired.
His mother, Bayanabai, active in the Dandakaranya Adivasi Mahila Sanghatan,
was arrested and killed during torture by the Gadchiroli police. The
villagers had protested the killing but their voice never reached the
mainstream media. His father is said to have surrendered two years ago.
Whenever he was about to be released, the police would slap fresh charges
and retain him in jail. This happened not once but thrice. Two months back,
when he was about to be released upon the dismissal of all the cases
against him, the police slapped two more charges to keep him in jail. The
other adivasi youth is Buddhu Kulle Timma, 33, from an interior village of
Gadchiroli district, who was also acquitted three years back but is still
in jail as the police slapped six fresh cases on him. All the adivasi
prisoners are illiterate peasants; one could well imagine the magnitude of
their helplessness and the human tragedy that is unfolding.

*Trial by Videoconferencing*

The trials are being held by video-conferencing. The cases are heard in the
Gadchiroli court with local advocates, but since the accused are not taken
to court, there is no communication between them and their advocates. The
accused are kept in the dark about what transpires in the court. They do
not know what the witnesses deposed, what arguments were made and what the
judge remarked. Videoconferencing effectively deprives them of all this
relevant information. As a result, when they are required to make a final
statement, they make it sans the context. There is at least one case in
which a life sentence was given, which was mainly attributable to this
misused technological application by the courts.

*Wanton Misuse of Powers*

Each one of the accused underwent inestimable agonies, their families
suffered incalculable distress, faced humiliation and disrepute in society,
ruination of family relations, and lost, on an average, four to five years
of their productive lives, all this for no fault of theirs. Invariably each
one has suffered illegal torture during their police custody remand and
humiliating conditions thereafter during judicial custody. One may not
quarrel about the professional privilege of the police in arresting people
and framing charges against them based on whatever information they had,
but these charges are subject to judicial scrutiny and may or may not hold.
But what if this privilege is wantonly and grossly misused? Unfortunately,
all the so-called Maoist cases present a pattern which clearly brings out
the mala fide intention of police to hold some selected persons in jail for
as long as possible and thereby terrorise others from following in their
footsteps. In law, the courts are supposed to punish the guilty, but as we
have seen in these cases, the person is already punished by the police even
before his/her guilt is established.

How can the police, the keepers of law and order, be oblivious of the law
of the land? The Supreme Court has held that mere association with any
outfit or adherence to any ideology, or possessing any literature, cannot
be an offence unless it is proved that the person concerned has committed a
violent act or caused others to do it. Merely being a passive member of
even a banned organisation does not constitute a crime. If this is the law
of the land, surely the police are expected to know it. In every case, the
courts adversely comment on the conduct of police, but the police repeat
such behaviour with impunity. If Dhawale gets out, Saibaba gets in to
recreate the saga of police illegality!