A day after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Home Minister P Chidambaram called for the need to win the trust of the people in Naxalite-hit areas, activists and lawyers from different camps led by Arundhati Roy, Prashant Bhushan and Vrinda Grover demanded investigations into all detention cases in states, including Chattisgarh.
Following the arrest of a journalist, Lingaram Kodopi, in Chattisgarh on September 9 for his alleged links with Naxalites, the activists stepped up pressure on the both central and state governments. "If the state continued to arrest innocent tribals, more and more people would be forced to take up arms," said Bhushan.
"Kodopi's arrest was to silence him and people like him who opposed the Salwa Judum campaign of the state government," the activists alleged.
They said that the state has defied the Supreme Court orders banning Salwa Judum, while Kodopi had openly taken a stand against it. "In fact he had documented the burning of villages by the police. Instead of taking action against the police, the journalist who has documented it was being arrested."
Senior Superintendent of Police S R P Kalluri had named Kodopi as the successor to former Communist Party of India (Maoist) spokesperson, Azad. These charges were later withdrawn, the activists said. Roy said the police had launched a witch-hunt against Kodopi since he refused to be part of the Salwa Judum in 2009.
Activists alleged that Kodopi was abducted by the Chattisgarh police in 2009 and detained illegally for 40 days till his aunt got a High Court to order for his release. While the police maintained that he was an SPO under the Salwa Judum, Kodopi denied the clams, saying he had been forcibly confined by the police and he did not want to be an SPO. After he was set free on court orders, he and his relatives and villagers were targeted by the police, until he was finally arrested last week.
He is certainly going to be killed, said Himanshu Kumar an activist in Bastar whose NGO was uprooted by the police two years ago alleging links with Naxals.
He said that he had brought Kodopi to Delhi as his life was in danger and got him admitted in a journalism school after which he went back to Chattisgarh to document the atrocities being committed by the police.
"On the one hand the Government wants to win the trust of the people and on the other it is filling jails with innocent tribals. This is the best way to drive more people towards taking up arms," said Bhushan. He demanded a commission of inquiry led by eminent judges to look at all detention cases in Chattisgarh.
Roy, who had earlier criticised the anti-corruption movement of Anna Hazare echoed Bhushan's views. As if to justify their presence on the same platform, Bhushan said Roy had earlier felt that the anti-corruption movement was concerning only the middle class and their urban needs.
He said it was important that the urban middle class youth identify with the issues of the rural areas of the country to understand the magnitude of the problems facing the nation. He said the anti-corruption movement was about identifying key issues of concern to the nation and would work on them all.
