Eminent personalities and activists, including Justice V R Krishna Iyer and historian Ramachandra Guha, today appealed to the government to ensure a speedy trial of tribals, who are accused of being Naxals or helping them.
In an open letter, they said the failure to ensure justice for adivasis is a grave blot on India's human rights record.
"Not only are we as a nation committed to democracy and human rights but our Constitution provides extensive safeguards and rights to the adivasis that are being violated by not ensuring fair and speedy trials for these thousands of adivasi undertrials.
"On every count - whether humanitarian or strategic - it is imperative that this prolonged failure to assure our country's adivasis of speedy, impartial justice be set right immediately," they said.
Releasing the letter here, activist Swami Agnivesh told reporters that urgent and dedicated measures under noted jurists were now needed to hear all these cases.
"Sentence those who are guilty and release the innocents, while compensating them for the damage they have undergone," he said.
Agnivesh said as per the replies he has received after filing Right To Information on the imprisonment of adivasis, 1,266 tribals were arrested after being accused of involving in Maoist activities in Naxal-hit states of Chhattisgarh, West Bengal and Bihar.
The district of Dantewara in Chhattisgarh alone has 377 cases where arrests are made solely on Maoists charge, he claimed.
