Dimapur, July 4 (MExN): The Naga Peoples’ Movement for Human Rights has demanded that a number of social and human rights activists, including filmmaker Gopal Menon arrested by the West Bengal police, should be released unconditionally. Denouncing the arrest, a letter of the Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners was received here forwarded by the NPMHR. Gopal Menon is said to have been assaulted by the police.
The NPMHR had condemned the arrest of the social and human rights activists and has demanded immediate unconditional release. The organization also expressed solidarity with the Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners.
The committee denounced the arrest of Medha Patkar, Gopal Menon, Sujato Bhadra and Anuradha Talwar and others who were said to be on their way to Lalgarh when the West Bengal police arrested them at Bombay Road. They were arrested and booked under Cr PC 151 & 188.The committee also wants the police men who brutally assaulted filmmaker Gopal Menon punished and that they must be released unconditionally.
The committee said filmmaker Gopal Menon was specifically targeted by the ‘vindictive’ police of West Bengal who brutally assaulted him with rifle stocks and batons. He was beaten under the specific instructions of the Additional SP of police Pranab Kumar as per the information from several civil rights groups, the committee alleged. After being beaten, he had to be admitted to the Debra Hospital near by as he started profusely vomiting it was informed. “Gopal Menon had also tried to accompany another fact finding team a few days before comprising of senior trade union activists, women’s activists, lawyers and other social activists. This team also was arrested at Midnapore. May be the crime of Gopal Menon was his assertion to his right to know and document the activities of the state in supposedly bringing back ‘normalcy’ in Lalgarh and Jangal Mahal,” the committee said.
“If this is what a documentary filmmaker has to face before the lawless police and paramilitary of the CPM-led government in West Bengal then one can imagine the state of affairs of the faceless Adivasi people of Lalgarh and Jangal Mahal,” the committee said. “No wonder why the police and the paramilitary are not allowing anyone with an independent mind to visit the area under occupation by the forces”.
The committee said the incident brings to the fore the fear of several civil rights bodies and other independent observers that the police and paramilitary can resort to any level of barbarism in order to ‘sanitize’ the area. “And this also makes it clear why the central home minister P. Chidambaram does not want any civil society group or human rights bodies to visit the area!” the committee said.
The committee also quoted latest reports coming from independent sources that the paramilitary has started burning the huts and destroying poultry of the people in Lalgarh. Their wells are being poisoned and excreta being thrown into the water bodies that are normally used for drinking purposes, it said. “All these exercise of brutality point to Salwa Judum kind of campaign being undertaken against the defiant masses of Lalgarh. Already there are reports of harassment of children, women and the old,” the committee said.
The Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners (CRPP) demands the immediate and unconditional release of the prominent social and civil rights activists. It also demanded booking Additional SP Pranab Kumar who had specifically instructed his men to brutalize filmmaker Gopal Menon. “Such high handed and authoritarian behaviour of senior police officers should be curbed firmly. Such police officers can only be a bane to the society,” the committee said.
