Dont Cry for them India Anand Teltumbde Power in defense of freedom is greater than power in behalf of tyranny

and oppression. -Malcom X Arun Ferreira painted by the Maharashtra Police as the dreaded Maoist has eventually stepped out of the central prison, Nagpur recently after spending nearly five years of his youthful life and undergoing all kinds of torture that is integral with the Maoist label and two controversial narco tests. The court has acquitted him in 10 out of 11 cases that were slapped on him and granted bail in one. Arun is not the exception, nor is the Maharashtra Police. We only see it happening when a stray case like Binayak Sens or Arun Ferreiras is picked up by the media that an innocent Indian merely for his dissenting views is harassed to the hilt and incarcerated in jail for years by the Indian state. But there are thousands of faceless people like them languishing in Indian jails for nothing. They neither have such credentials as to appeal to media nor have money to contest false charges against them. They meekly endure their fate. Ordeals of Arun Media driven by its business logic picks up cases with news (sensation) value. The cases of Binayak Sen, Kobad Ghandy and Arun Ferreira became news worthy because they belonged to middle class but treaded strange paths. Arun gained media attention because he was from Mumbai, from Bandra, the middle class dream suburb, educated at elite Xavier College. He was arrested by the Nagpur ATS (Anti Terrorist Squad) on May 8, 2007 along with Ashok Satyam Reddy alias Murli at Deekshabhoomi Nagpur with deadly weapons such as a pen drive and leftist literature. To justify their action, the police had concocted a story that they were plotting to blow up the Ambedkar Memorial there on the Dasssera day when Ambedkarites congregate in large numbers to commemorate their liberation from Hindu religion. The police story outraged many peoples sensibilities, which reflected in spate of articles and news items that followed condemning the arrest. Emboldened by this, some people sought to come out in open as Friends of Arun Ferreira to campaign for his release until they were snubbed by the police threat of arrest. In the police custody he underwent all kinds of police torture including the scandalous act of putting petrol into rectum. As he revealed in the press conference in Mumbai on 11 January 2012, the police had used their technique of causing bodily pain without leaving any mark. He was subjected to narco test, not once but twice, which had created another sensation because he inter alia revealed that the Maoist activities were funded in Maharashtra by Bal Thackeray. He documented his experience with the narco test in his My Tryst with Narco Test, which verily exposes the fake scientific basis of the test and its real character as a method of psycho-physical torture. He was charged in nine Naxal-related crimes, from murder to planting bombs and of course under sections of Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA). Over the four years of legal battle, he was acquitted in all those cases. The court found not a shred of evidence against him. On 27 September, he was thus freed. But the moment he set foot outside the jail gate, plainclothes officers pounced on him, covered his face and forced him into an unmarked car, in

which they fled, all under the gaze of his elderly parents, who were waiting for him outside the prison. His lawyers tried to intervene but were beaten. Later, they learnt that he was taken to Purada police station and arrested in a case registered in 2007, when he was already in prison. As it stands exposed, the police merely wanted to keep him in the jail as long as possible taking advantage of infirmity of law. Faceless Many Others In 2008, several college students, mostly Dalits, were arrested on suspicion of their links with Maoists in Maharashtra. Each of them was implicated in multiple cases. As in the case of Arun Ferreira, the police did not have any evidence against them. As such they were acquitted by the courts one after another but not before making them bear their share of torture and jail term. It left a permanent scar on their minds and a blemish on their future. Last year, the ATS supposedly busted a Maoist den in Pune, arresting among others one Angela Sontakke, reportedly a very important Naxal cadre in Maharashtra. Angela, an ex-college lecturer with B.Sc. (Microbiology), M.Sc. (Zoology), B.Ed and M.A. (sociology), has as many as 20 cases on her. By simple extrapolation, she could spend at least a decade in jail, if not rearrested or implicated in additional false cases. Among the arrested are also the activists of Kabir Kala Manch of Pune, which had become well known as a radical Ambedkarite cultural outfit. The police terror has completely decimated this rising troupe, sending many of its talented activists into hiding. These people with their humble background of course did not make news. The case of Sudhir Dhawale, noted writer, editor of Vidrohi, (a radical Ambedkarite monthly), and a social activist however created a stir. Because almost entire whos who of the progressive Maharashtra led by the noted socialist leader Bhai Vaidya and Prof N D Patil had come forward to press for his release to the home minister. Sudhir was arrested on 3 January 2010 at the railway station while returning after attending a literary conference at Wardha. He was charged with sedition (sec 124) and under Secs 17, 20 and 39 of the UAPA. When confronted by the people, all that the police had to say was that they found incriminating literature and that his name was taken by one Bhimrao Bhoite, an alleged Maoist who was arrested earlier. The literature in question was the 87 books by Ambedkar, Marx, Lenin, and even Arundhati Roy, which were taken away by the police in the raid on his house. As regards their other charge, if some alleged Maoists merely taking a name became the ground enough for arresting a person, Arun Ferreira had named Bal Thackeray as funding the Maoist activities in Maharashtra, a serious revelation that came out during the narco test. Law demanded that at least Bal Thackeray was arrested and subjected to investigation. Unlawful Police Acts As regards unlawful re-arrests after acquittal by the courts, there were 27 cases of political prisoners just in the Nagpur jail alone. It has become the modus operandi of police to hold people they want inside the jail as long as they wish. Nowhere in the IPC Maoism is defined as a crime but the police use it as self evident crime. Even after the Supreme Court verdict that mere membership of a banned organization does not make a person criminal unless he or she resorts or incites people to violence, the police persist with their high handed behavior, surely in contempt of court. To commit violence or incite people to commit it is a well established crime in IPC,

whatever the ideology of the committer. When the VHPs Acharya Giriraj Kishore had publicly justified the lynching of five dalits to death in Jajjhar in 2002 for allegedly killing a cow, he was directly inciting people to repeat it but the police did not act. In the case of Sudhir Dhawale, they kept on repeating that he had links with Maoists. As the case of Arun Ferreira well illustrates it, what the police did is blatantly unlawful. Right in his illegal arrest they violated his fundamental right to liberty, belief and expression guaranteed in the Constitution. It was followed by a series of unlawful acts: in threatening his friends with dire consequences if they voiced their support, in torturing him in police custody, in forging his signature on the consent form for the narco test, in obtaining a fraudulent order from the court for conducting the second narco test, in concocting false charges against him, in making series of false representations before courts, in kidnapping him after his release from the jail, in manhandling his lawyers, and many more. One does not have to be a Maoist to experience this unlawful conduct of our law enforcing agency; it has been its abiding character vis--vis common masses. If at the very basic level of its interface with people, the state conducted itself in such a grossly anti-people manner, the entire constitutional superstructure with its high sounding phrases just crumbles, crushing whatever hopes people reared in the state. This is the very process that makes Maoists out of ordinary people. Dreaming a Revolution Arun Ferreira and so most others have denied being Maoists. But even if they had been one, that does not make them criminal. It is not the issue of Maoists being right or wrong, least of justifying or condemning them. After all, they are people, who are responding to the deceit and violence of the state in their chosen way. One may disagree with their ideology or methods but one has to admit the horrific picture of people in this country, which propels them to take a radical path. After six decades of the constitutional regime proclaimed in the name of people, promising all kinds of lofty ideals, it has only aggravated the inherent injustice, inequality, violence, corruption, and doublespeak in the society. While rich flaunt their opulent life style, a vast majority of people go hungry. The country has dubious distinction of having largest numbers of malnourished, anaemic, hungry people and underfed, underweight, and stunted children in the world. The ruling classes just rely on their deceitful responses using caste, communities and other such divisions in people. Indeed, the rot has gone much deeper than normally imagined. All middle class attempts at tinkering the system therefore appear amiss. In contrast, the alleged Maoists stand apart with their agenda of revolution. They are the only ones who appear to have correctly comprehended the problem. It is utter stupidity of the state to think that imprisonment, torture, encounters and custodial deaths are going to deter them from their goal. No revolutionary ever buckled by these methods and shunned revolution.