Published: June 6, 2010 02:06 IST | Updated: June 6, 2010 04:37 IST
AHMEDABAD, June 6, 2010
Arrest of Dalit leader, wife as 'Naxalites' condemned
Manas Dasgupta
Several voluntary organisations and "concerned citizens" fighting for
human rights have condemned the "indiscriminate" detention of some
human right activists and trade union leaders, branding them as
"Naxalites."
"It has become an obsession with the Gujarat government and its police
to brand human right activists as Naxalites to stifle the voice of
protest by the poor and the downtrodden. The civil society need to
stand up against such undemocratic methods of the police to curb
dissensions against the government administration," Mr. Hiren Gandhi,
director of "Darshan," a voluntary organisation, noted human right
activist and advocate Girish Patel, and several others said here on
Tuesday.
They were particularly protesting against the detention earlier this
week of a Dalit leader, Ambubhai Vaghela Srinivas Sattayya Kurapati
alias Kishore, who hails from Andhra Pradesh, but has made Gujarat his
work place for the last eight years or so, and his young wife,
Hansaben.
"One can easily find holes in the police story of them being Naxalites
because the police do not even know that the 30-year old Hansaben is a
local Gujarati girl and does not hail from Andhra as claimed by the
police. The only crime of Hansa, an employee of the well-known
Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA), was that she was a niece of
Ambubhai," Mr. Gandhi said. Ambubhai, who worked as a computer
operator at Darshan for the last four years, had migrated to Surat
from a remote Andhra village years ago and Mr. Gandhi said he had
never seen him involved in any controversial activity during his
four-year association with him. The police, however, raided the
Darshan office in the wake of Ambubhai's arrest and took away a
computer.
Human rights activists said they knew Ambubhai very well; except
raising the voice of protest against communal disturbances and
fighting for the poor and the oppressed in Gomtipur and the
neighbouring labour-dominated localities through street theatres and
other cultural activities, Ambubhai had never participated in any
violent activities. "The detention of the three in the name of
Naxalite activities is the height of the police imagination and their
oppressive measures against the human right activists," Mr. Patel
said.
Citing the arrest of tribal activist Avinash Kulkarni in Dangs more
than a month ago and is still languishing in jail despite protests by
the civil society, the human right activists expressed the
apprehension that after Darshan, the police planned to target all
voluntary organisations working for human rights. They believed that
the Narendra Modi administration was creating the bogey of "Maoism out
of thin air" to divert attention from the CBI investigation into the
Sohrabuddin and other fake encounters as well as the 2002 communal
riot cases that were taking the inquiry on the doorstep of top
political leaders in the State.
Valjibhai Vaghela, a close associate of Ambubhai, said people in
Gomtipur and its neighbourhood had decided to put up boards at all
houses "proclaiming themselves as Naxalites and getting ready to be
arrested to flood the jails" if this was the way the Gujarat police
wanted to stifle the voices of the downtrodden.
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