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July 12, 2014 vol xlix no 28 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
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Narratives of Police Illegality
Anand Teltumbde
Anand Teltumbde (anandraj@gmail.com) is a
writer and civil rights activist associated with
the Committee for the Protection of
Democratic Rights, Mumbai.
All the so-called Maoist cases,
including those of radical political
activists Sudhir Dhawale and
Arun Ferreira, present a pattern
which clearly brings out the mala
de intention of police to hold
some selected persons in jail for
as long as possible and thereby
terrorise others from following in
their footsteps. In law, the courts
are supposed to punish the guilty,
but in these instances the accused
are already punished by the
police even before their
guilt is established.
S
udhir Dhawale, a well-known
social activist, who was arrested
by the police for his alleged links
with the Maoists, was released from
Nagpurs central prison after being
acquitted of all the charges by the
Gondia sessions court on 22 May 2014.
He was in jail for 40 months. Along
with him, the eight other co-accused
persons were also acquitted. In 2005,
quite like Dhawale, the dalit poet Shan-
tanu Kamble was arrested on similar
charges, tortured over a period of 100
days before he got bail. He now stands
cleared of all charges by the court. The
radical political activist, Arun Ferreira,
was conned in jail for more than four
years, tortured and harassed, repeat-
edly rearrested in fresh cases after
being acquitted in the earlier ones,
before he nally got bail in the last
case. The lesser known cases of arrests
of 12 members of the Deshbhakti Yuva
Manch of Chandrapur in January 2008
and the arrest of Bandu Meshram from
Nagpur on very similar charges also
come to mind. They all have been
acquitted but not before torture and
harassment at the hands of the police
and humiliation of jail over periods
ranging from one to three years. One is
also reminded of the arrest of Anil
Mamane and two others when they
were selling books at Deekshabhoomi
in Nagpur in October 2007.
There are scores of other cases from
remote rural areas wherein young
women and men, incarcerated in jails,
were arrested on vague charges of being
Maoists, many without even the charges
being framed, and nobody to provide
legal and other aid, helplessly facing
ruin with the passage of time.
Procedural Injustice
Sudhir Dhawale has been a political
activist right from his college days
in Nagpur when he was part of the
V idyarthi Pragati Sanghatana (VPS), a
radical students organisation in the
1980s. He never hid his ideological lean-
ings and association with the mass
organisations that professed Marxism-
Leninism, known loosely as Naxalism,
and now as Maoism. But he denied hav-
ing connection with the Maoist party or
its activities, least of all, the violent
actions committed by it. After coming to
Mumbai, he became active in the cul-
tural movement and took a leading part
in organising an alternative Vidrohi
Marathi Sahitya Sammelan in 1999 in
protest against the mainstream literary
gathering, which is hugely sponsored by
the state. This initiative took the form of
Vidrohi Sanskrutik Chalwal, with its
own bimonthly organ, Vidrohi, of which
Dhawale became the editor. Soon Vid-
rohi became a rallying point for radical
activists in Maharashtra. He drew on his
literary air in writing pamphlets and
books to propagate revolutionary ideas
in support of the ongoing struggles of
adivasis and dalits. He played a leading
role in the foundation of Republican
Panthers on 6 December 2007, which
identies itself as a movement for the
annihilation of caste. He was active in
the statewide protests that erupted after
the gory caste atrocity at Khairlanji,
which was irresponsibly termed by the
home minister of Maharashtra as insti-
gated by the Naxalites. Dhawale was
placed on the police scanner since then.
At the personal level, he lived a spartan
life devoted to these activities, which
was supported by his wife, his comrade
in VPS, who worked at the Dr Babasaheb
Ambedkar Memorial Hospital, Byculla
in Mumbai.
After his arrest in Wardha, where
Dhawale was invited to speak at a dalit
literary conference, the police raided his
house in Mumbai in a manner as though
he was a dreaded terrorist. His wife,
Darshana, and children had to undergo
considerable hardship and humiliation.
The education of his children was com-
pletely disrupted; his son failed in the
12th standard board exam. As regards a
case of association on the basis of some
statement by some accused person or
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Economic & Political Weekly EPW July 12, 2014 vol xlix no 28
11
the literature recovered from his house,
evidence of this kind has been deemed
inadequate in Supreme Court judgments
in several cases. However, with an alibi
that the courts would decide upon value
of the evidence provided, the police irre-
sponsibly persisted with its charge that
he was involved in unlawful activities
and Maoist conspiracy. The courts how-
ever acquitted him, trashing the police
case, but to what avail? The polices
objective of punishing Dhawale and
terrorising many activists like him was
accomplished.
A Human Tragedy
There have been scores of cases before
and after Dhawales arrest; Arun Ferreiras
is by far the most revealing of those
featured in the media. Like Dhawale,
people who knew Ferreira were out-
raged by the police charge and came for-
ward to defend him until Senior Super-
intendent of Police Yadav, the then head
of the Anti-Naxalite Cell had threatened
that even they would be arrested as
Naxal supporters. Ferreira underwent
all kinds of torture and harassment,
including a narco-analysis test, the
result of which created a small stir as he
had stated that Bal Thackeray was
nancing Naxalite activities in Mahar-
ashtra. Going by the authenticity which
the police ascribe to narco-analysis, it
should have at least interrogated Thack-
eray. Ferreiras revelation under narco-
analysis was far more authentic in terms
of the polices own schema than that of
some accused person taking the very
name that the police wanted him/her to
state during interrogation. No charge
against Ferreira could stick but police
still managed to keep him in jail for over
four years. Ferreira has sued the state
for infringing his fundamental rights to
liberty and freedom of movement, and
demanded an apology and compensa-
tion of Rs 25 lakh. Others simply have to
swallow the injustice.
The other eight persons, all dalits,
acquitted along with Dhawale were also
arrested on trumped up charges and
were made to undergo torture, harass-
ment, humiliation, and imprisonment.
There are now 44 persons with a Maoist
tag in Nagpur jail, seven of whom
are women. Of course, they include the
relatively recent inmates, Hem Mishra,
Prashant Rahi and the Delhi University
professor G N Saibaba. The latter cases
were ashed in the media and the
polices actions were widely condemned.
But the others are nameless and faceless
adivasi youth from the interiors of
Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra, most
of them having been rounded up in the
wake of some Maoist action nearby.
Two adivasi youth have been the oldest
inmates of the Nagpur Central Prison.
One is Ramesh Pandhariram Netam, 26,
an activist of a student organisation, who
is in jail for the last six years. His parents
were reportedly activists in the mass
movements identied as Maoist-inspired.
His mother, Bayanabai, active in the
D andakaranya Adivasi Mahila Sanghatan,
was arrested and killed during torture by
the Gadchiroli police. The villagers had
protested the killing but their voice never
reached the mainstream media. His
father is said to have surrendered two
years ago. Whenever he was about to be
released, the police would slap fresh
charges and retain him in jail. This hap-
pened not once but thrice. Two months
back, when he was about to be released
upon the dismissal of all the cases against
him, the police slapped two more charges
to keep him in jail. The other adivasi
youth is Buddhu Kulle Timma, 33, from
an interior village of Gadchiroli district,
who was also acquitted three years back
but is still in jail as the police slapped
six fresh cases on him. All the adivasi
prisoners are illiterate peasants; one
could well imagine the magnitude of their
helplessness and the human tragedy
that is unfolding.
Trial by Videoconferencing
The trials are being held by video-
conferencing. The cases are heard in the
Gadchiroli court with local advocates,
but since the accused are not taken
to court, there is no communication
between them and their advocates. The
accused are kept in the dark about what
transpires in the court. They do not
know what the witnesses deposed,
what arguments were made and what
the judge remarked. Videoconferencing
effectively deprives them of all this
r elevant information. As a result, when
they are required to make a nal state-
ment, they make it sans the context.
There is at least one case in which a life
sentence was given, which was mainly
attributable to this misused technological
application by the courts.
Wanton Misuse of Powers
Each one of the accused underwent
in estimable agonies, their families suf-
fered incalculable distress, faced humili-
ation and disrepute in society, ruination
of family relations, and lost, on an aver-
age, four to ve years of their productive
lives, all this for no fault of theirs. Invari-
ably each one has suffered illegal torture
during their police custody remand and
humiliating conditions thereafter during
judicial custody. One may not quarrel
about the professional privilege of the
police in arresting people and framing
charges against them based on whatever
information they had, but these charges
are subject to judicial scrutiny and may
or may not hold. But what if this privi-
lege is wantonly and grossly misused?
Un fortunately, all the so-called Maoist
cases present a pattern which clearly
brings out the mala de intention of
police to hold some selected persons in
jail for as long as possible and thereby
terrorise others from following in their
footsteps. In law, the courts are supposed
to punish the guilty, but as we have seen
in these cases, the person is already pun-
ished by the police even before his/her
guilt is established.
How can the police, the keepers of law
and order, be oblivious of the law of the
land? The Supreme Court has held that
mere association with any outt or
adherence to any ideology, or possessing
any literature, cannot be an offence
unless it is proved that the person con-
cerned has committed a violent act or
caused others to do it. Merely being a
passive member of even a banned organ-
isation does not constitute a crime. If
this is the law of the land, surely the
police are expected to know it. In every
case, the courts adversely comment on
the conduct of police, but the police
repeat such behaviour with impunity.
If Dhawale gets out, Saibaba gets in to
r ecreate the saga of police illegality!