jayeeta
COMMITTEE FOR THE RELEASE OF POLITICAL PRISONERS
185/3, FOURTH FLOOR, ZAKIR NAGAR, NEW DELHI-110025

28/08/2013

Condemn and expose the state-sponsored intimidatory tactics of the lawless security agencies of West Bengal on people’s activists and their kin!

As part of the joint strategy to further increase the repression on the various people’s movements—against the anti-people policies of the state as well as for a society free from all forms of exploitation and oppression—the new desperate tactics of the state agencies has been to increase the rate of conviction of those put behind bars under various charges especially the UAPA. What is being witnessed in states like Maharashtra, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh etc. is an all out effort on the side of the state/central intelligence agencies to slap as many cases on various activists of the people’s movements so as to ensure that either the incarceration of the political prisoner is prolonged due to the perilous delay in trial on a large number of cases or through hook or crook his/her conviction is manufactured. This is yet another desperate act of the State who is witness to the fact that increasingly the people are fearlessly opposing the dog-eat-dog policies which the state wants to push forcefully on the people under the garb of growth and development. Not only are the people fighting fearlessly such policies but also mobilizing aid to the incarcerated despite threats and psychological war indulged in by the state to browbeat the people into submission. And because of the active and competent legal defence of many of the activists it is a fact that a considerable number of acquittals/bails have been successfully realized notwithstanding the frenzy created by an obliging media or the surfeit of charges of serious import slapped on many of the activists. Most discouraging for the fascist state is the active participation of the family members and friends of the political prisoners in such campaigns and legal defence. So what is the way out for a state when the people are losing fear by the day? That too at a time when there is all round crisis among various ruling class parties and within them vis-à-vis the deepening economic crisis and the increasing exposure of the real pro-imperialist, pro-capital face of these parties, the only way out for the state is to further unleash the whip of lawlessness and intimidation on the people and the people’s activists.
Of immediate significance is the case of people’s activist Jayeeta Das who was literally abducted on 1st August 2013 from open market place of south Calcutta and was shown to the media as a Maoist. We have already shown how this arrest like many that preceded it have once again violated the Supreme Court directives that has to be followed so that the basic rights of the detained/arrested is not violated. As part of the intimidatory tactics she was held incommunicado for hours by the police without allowing her access to a lawyer of her choice. It goes without saying that there was no arrest warrant. But the lawless Special Task Force of Kolkata knows full well that this alone won’t fetch them the much needed conviction of the accused. So the next act of impunity is to barge in to the houses of various friends and relatives of Jayeeta and threaten them with dire consequences if they don’t cough up evidence against her. In this particular case the public posture of the Special Task Force is that they have nothing against the family and friends of Jayeeta. But behind this smokescreen is the calculated/premeditated intimidation of the friends and kin of Jayeeta Das. Such unprecedented acts of impunity keep recurring despite the fact that various courts including the Supreme Court have expressed serious reservation on numerous occasions. It is also a grim reminder that beyond such lamentations from the side of the court, hardly has any positive step been initiated to restore the confidence of the common people on the much talked about ‘rule of law’.
From the acts of impunity of the police and the connivance of the judiciary people are increasingly forced to believe that the rule of law is only for the rulers and the wretched of the earth have to condemn themselves for their miserable/unenviable existence. But as mentioned earlier, people are refusing to take things for granted. The days won’t be far away when the wages of impunity of the security/intelligence agencies will be sought by the people themselves belied by a system that is increasingly getting tilted towards the interests of the god men, looters/bankers, black marketers, speculators, land mafia and pimps.
The need of the hour is to fight down the new face of Operation Green Hunt that has already reached the urban centres which has seen a section of the masses of the people, students and the intelligentsia standing resolutely against the genocidal policy of the state on the adivasis of Central and Eastern regions of the Indian subcontinent. CRPP condemns strongly the intimidatory tactics of the Special Task Force Kolkata on the friends and relatives of Jayeeta. This should not be seen as an isolated incident as it is part of a well thought out larger design to penalize and control all forms of dissent of the masses of the people for their genuine demands for a better future and society. CRPP calls upon all democratic and progressive forces to unitedly fight such fascist designs of the State.

In Solidarity,

SAR Geelani,
President

Amit Bhattacharyya,
Secretary General

Rona Wilson,
Secretary, Public Relations

 

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