Is standing up for human rights make one a Maoist ?
- the police do not observe their own rules in arresting a person -
Stan Swamy
Massive displacement of people, especially the Adivasis & Moolvasis, is taking
place. It is done in violation of the Supreme Court's directive [Samata
Judgement, 1997] that the government should consult the concerned Gram Sabha
before starting any project. It is natural, therefore, people have begun to
resist displacement and refuse to hand over their land to industry and mining.
Of late, the Jharkhand, Orissa and Chattisgarh governments have started
arresting human rights activists who are providing leadership to
anti-displacement and anti-communal movements.
The list is long, but I will mention only some of the more prominent among them:
Jitan Marandi Jharkhand author, poet, human rights
activist
Damodar Turi Jharkhand anti-displacement & human rights
activist
Munni Hansdah Jharkhand anti-displacement & human rights
activist
Ram Charan Roy Jharkhand anti-displacement & human rights
activist
Hopna Baskey Jharkhand anti-displacement & human
rights activist
Abhay Sahu Orissa anti-displacement & human
rights activist
Lenin Kumar Orissa author & anti-communal
activist
Ravi Jena Orissa publisher & anti-communal
activist
Dhananjay Lenka Orissa anti-communal activist
Protima Das Orissa advocate & anti-displacement
activist
Pradeep Orissa anti-displacement activist
Binayak Sen Chattisgarh medical doctor & human rights activist
And there are many more.
Adding insult to injury . . . the police do not observe their own rules.
The National Police Commission (1997) affirms that Legal Protection/Safeguards
for Detainees in Custody are inherent in Article 21 and 22(1) of the
Constitution and therefore require to be recognised and scrupulously protected.
Some such safeguards are:
1) An arrested person being held in custody is entitled to have one friend
or relative informed that he has been arrested and where he is being detained.
2) The police officer shall inform the arrested person when he is brought
to the police station of this right.
3) An entry should be made in the Diary as to who was informed of the
arrest. A police officer making an arrest should also record in the Case Diary
the reasons for making the arrest.
Apart from the above, the historic judgement of the Supreme Court in D.K.Basu
v/s State of West Bengal (AIR 1997 SC 610) compels the Indian police force to
follow these requirements:
1) The police personnel carrying out the arrest and handling the
interrogation of the arrestee should bear accurate, visible and clear
identification and name tags with their designations.
2) The police officer carrying out the arrest shall prepare a memo of
arrest at the time of arrest and such memo shall be attested by at least one
witness, who may be either a member of the family of the arrestee or a
respectable person of the locality. It shall also be countersigned by the
arrestee and shall contain the time and date of arrest.
3) The person arrested must be made aware of this right to have someone
informed of his arrest as soon as he is put under arrest or is detained.
4) An entry must be made in the Diary disclosing the name of the friend /
relative who has been informed of the arrest.
5) The arrestee should, where he so requests, be also examined at the time
of his arrest and major and minor injuries on his body must be recorded.
6) The "Inspection Memo" must be signed both by the arrestee and the
police officer, and its copy provided to the arrestee.
7) The arrestee should be subjected to medical examination by a trained
doctor every 48 hours during his detention in custody.
8) The arrestee may be permitted to meet his lawyer during the
interrogation.
9) The right of every person detained / arrested to know the grounds of
arrest and his right to bail should be honoured.
10) Failure to comply with the requirements mentioned above shall apart from
rendering the concerned official liable for departmental action, also render
him liable to be punished for contempt of court.
Added to these are the recommendations of the Law Commission (November 2000)
that
1) representatives of registered rights groups and NGOs should be
entitled, under law, to visit police stations and examine custodial records.
2) Arrest or search of women should only take place in the presence of
women police officers and should not take place at night.
3) Women should be detained separately from men. The effectiveness of this
gender-based detention should be monitored by independent mechanisms.
The reality is very different. . .
There are serious flaws in the way police goes about arresting people.
1) most often the police raids a place like a bull-dozer breaking doors
and any thing that is on the way. The custom among Adivasi people is they leave
footware outside and enter their house bare-footed. The place where they
prepare and have their food ('adig') is considered a sacred place where the
spirits of their dead ancestors dwell. The police have no consideration for the
cultural values of people and enter the house with their dirty boots, pushing
and thrashing any and every body in the house.
2) The police do not usually produce 'search warrant' but jump on the
person they have come to catch. Then they search the house / office turning
every thing up side down. They usually bring with them some leaflets / booklets
called "maoist / naxalite literature" and pretend they found it in the premises.
3) Rarely is a respected local person present during the raid to bear
witness to the search operation. Some times one or two 'police informers' may
be brought along who will do the police bidding.
4) It is a rare occasion a "search-inventory"is made which is signed by
the arrestee and one other witness.
5) Once they have arrested a person they want, they can do any thing to
him / her. The arrestee is brought to the police station, beaten up brutally
like an animal under the pretense of "extracting truth / evidence".
6) Can the police in all honesty say they do not use 'third degree
methods' on the detainees?
7) if the police wants to put the label "naxalite / extremist / maoist",
they just place a table, put some old pistols / guns on it, line up the
detainees behind the table and call some press persons to take a photograph and
publish in local news papers. Sadly, many of the press reporters also go along
with the police version without checking / verifying the facts.
Once this is done, the general public is made to believe that the detainees are
really extremists and the police have done well in catching them.
But who will bell the cat?
Sadly, we cannot look up to the local government to come to the rescue of
these victims of police atrocity. In fact the local govt administration is
part of the game. Neither can we expect the district-level judiciary to save
them because it goes by the version of the police and even refuses to grant
bail.
The electronic media and the press in general play safe and mostly project govt
views. Only in exceptional and shocking cases such as Babri Masjid demolition,
Gujerat genocide, Orissa Kandhamal attack on Christians we saw some sane
reaction from the mass media. There are plenty of intellectuals, authors, legal
experts, artists who can play a healthy role. Only they need to be helped to
form
distinct forums of their own so they can speak their mind when glaring human
rights violations take place. Last but not the least are the masses of people
who
through specific People's Movements and People's Organisations can undertake
civil disobedience movements. There is nothing like people's power. Shri
Jayprakash Narayan has shown us the way.
We are then left with human rights and democratic rights organisations at local,
national and international levels who alone will come forward to defend the
human & constitutional rights of the unjustly arrested and tortured human rights
activists. The challenge before us is to network these groups and organisations
so they become strong pressure groups. And if they can be connected to
international bodies like the United Nations Human Rights Commission it can
go a long way in safeguarding human rights. There is no other way.
20 December 08
----------------------------------------------------------------
Bagaicha
c/o Agricultural Training Centre
Namkum P.O.
RANCHI - 834 001
Jharkhand
