Activists recount custodial torture for opposing govt, urges for release of all political prisoners

The Campaign Against State Repression (CASR), a collective of more than 35 organisations, on Friday gathered in the Press Club of India in Delhi to raise their collective voice for the release of political prisoners and called to unite against state repression on all fronts. 

The event titled “Criminalising Dissent” was joined by human rights and land rights activists from Uttarakhand, Chattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and Punjab.

Student leader Asif Iqbal Tanha, Mukesh Mauladh, President of Zamin Prapti Sangharsh Committee, Damodar Turi of Visthapan Virodhi Jan Vikas Andolan, Bikkar Singh, financial secretary of Zamin Prapti Sangharsh Committee and student leader Atik Ur Rahman addressed the gathering.

Student activist Asif Iqbal Tanha started by urging everyone to continue the struggle against injustice. He said, “In the name of terrorism, Muslims are sent to rot in jail. It is a shame that a country with 14% Muslim population has 18% Muslim prisoners.”

He also recounted his experience as a political prisoner in the national capital’s Tihar Jail.

“ I was arrested when every locality was sealed due to COVID-19 when no movement was allowed,” Tanha recalled that he was fasting when he was arrested and he was physically tortured in this condition. 

“I was brutally attacked and starved by the police for my participation in the anti-CAA-NRC protests. I was lashed by the police belts as they tied me to a tree.”

Mukesh Mauladh, President of, Zamin Prapti Sangharsh Committee highlighted how despite continuous state repression the various marginalised sections of the society own and continue their struggle towards justice.

He said that the land struggle in Punjab for Dalit peasants, who were promised 1/3rd share of Panchayati land in 1960 is never fulfilled but whoever demands this land are put in prisons. As per the Village Common Land (Regulation) Act, 1961, one-third of the panchayat land can be leased out only to the Dalits. 

He said, “It is a common practice in Punjab for upper-caste landlords to get the land meant for Dalits, by hook or by crook.”

Mauladh said that the state, police officers in Mandaur police arrested 17 people fighting for their land rights.

“Police keep telling us if we want our political prisoners who are held hostage by the state, we should stop our land struggle. Even when we successfully won the land which is their legal right, the state unleashed caste-based violence through feudal forces like landlords against the Dalit peasants.”

“They want to crush every dissenting voice, but as much as they are trying to muzzle our voices, we are rising,” the ZPSC President added.

Human rights defender and Land rights activist from more than a decade Soni Suri from Bastar’s Dantewada and Hidme Markam forest rights and prisoners’ rights activist, who was branded as a “Naxalite” by the state and jailed for two years and later released after charges against her proved wrong sent video messages which were played in the gathering as they couldn’t join the event. 

Hidme Markam who cannot speak any any other language than “gondi”, her indigenous language highlighted the violence of the state on the Adivasis in Bastar and the policies brought up by the state in an attempt to attack the “jal, jangal and jameen” of the Adivasis. 

She recounted the time when she was jailed for fighting against Adani’s land-grabbing ‘developmental’ project. She said, “The daily violence experiences by Adivasi women, how they are raped, beaten and paraded naked regularly by the state cannot be put into words and pictures.”

Markam said, “When I see the struggles of women who are fighting along with us, I feel that what I faced is nothing” 

“The state can use every power to deconstruct the movement with all its apparatus but we are growing evidently and we will continue doing so, despite every kind of repression we are facing”. Her message was translated and explained by a student activist. 

Soni Suri also recounted her 12-year struggle against the fake cases which later pressed courts for acquitting her. She said, “Even after 12 years, Bastar’s condition has not changed. I am still stifled, unnecessarily interrogated by the police.”

She explained how police time and again come and ask her if she is married and has kids, if she has kids is she lactating? She also accused the police of squeezing her nipples to prove that she has children and she feeds them. She accused the establishment of the rise and spread of Maoism.

She said, “It is simple, it is in the hands of the state, they can end Maoism by giving people equal rights, by letting people have their lands.”

“The reality is the state is not interested in ending Maoism but they will continue looting the resource-rich lands that belong to people and not them”, she added.

She expressed solidarity with the people in Manipur and pointed out how the same pattern is being adopted by every state and how the stories of violence in Manipur and Chhatisgarh by the state have everything in common.

She also said that people ask women and us to file FIRs against police brutalities but when the perpetrators are the police themselves, who do they complain to? 

She said, “When the police itself is the accused in the crime, how will the law work? Who will police the police which openly tells us no one will come to our rescue and that the law can’t save us? How will this law help?

She said, “Hum ladenge aur Jan jangal jameen ki baat karenge.”

Anti-displacement activist Damodar Turi of Visthapan Virodhi Janvikas Andolan spoke about how people’s struggle for Jal Jangal Jameen in Jharkhand shares many similarities with Chhattisgarh and even Odisha.

He said, “Time and again people are fooled in the name of development but people are only paying the price by being displaced ever since independence.”

He cited an example of Uttar Pradesh the model of development introduced right after independence and said, “It claimed to make India a temple of development, but at the cost of displacing thousands of Adivasis.”

He accused the Bharatiya Janata Party’s government in Jharkhand of selling off people’s lands and forests to big corporations like Jindals, Birlas, Tatas etc. through Memorandums of Understanding, similar to Chhattisgarh and Odisha which further made people homeless.

He said, “Nobody loves to face repression but we are forced to speak and write the story and agony of our oppression. We fight and face repression only for demanding equal rights, which everyone deserves.”

“Why can’t my son, your son go to the school Ambani’s son goes to? Why can’t governments talk about uniformity in this sense?”, he asked.

Bikkar Singh, financial secretary of Zamin Prapti Sangharsh Committee said, “The image of Punjab is not what you see in movies. With 1% of Dalits in India possessing land, the ZPSC brings up the fight for land in Punjab, land which was granted to landless Dalit peasants despite land reforms. But unfortunately, Dalit peasants are still struggling to get their lands from the feudal forces.”

Singh said that the feudal forces in Punjab are trying their hardest to ensure that landless peasants in Punjab do not get their land.

Singh said, “To challenge the state means facing repression and breakdown and facing jail and Dalit women farmers in Punjab are most affected by the police action.”

He urged people to continue the struggle against repression and to ensure absolute equality.

Atik Ur Rahman, activist and former Campus Front of India leader who faced jail for more than 2 years in the alleged Hathras UAPA case said that the entire case and the death of the Hathras rape victim and said that she was not only raped by the rapists but also in a way the state is also equally responsible for her rape which gave a free hand to the culprits and no action was taken by the UP government in time. 

He held accountable the Hathras administration, UP Government, medical system and judiciary for the injustice and agony the Hathras rape victim went through. 

He said, “If things would have handled carefully on a smaller level, she would have been alive but everyone from administration to the medical practitioner who ruled out rape is equally responsible for her rape and death. Not only that the criminal justice system of the country also failed her and family,  they still didn’t get justice”, he added.

He said that he was only arrested for his Muslim identity. “Everyone else who visited Hathras was sent back by the police, but I along with 4 Muslims were arrested. Why? Because we are Muslims.”

He recalled his harrowing experience in jail while being a heart patient and how dealt with medical negligence, by the Uttar Pradesh police and authorities. 

During his term in jail, he underwent open heart surgery, survived a paralysis attack and “nearly died due to sheer neglect of the police”. He also highlighted the red-tapism at every level inside the jail from lower to higher authorities.

Rahman pressed on the need to resist oppression together, by uniting against fascist forces for every marginalised minority, be it Dalits, Adivasis or Muslims.

The program was moderated by Professor Sachin N, faculty at Delhi University’s Dayal Singh College. He highlighted how right-wing forces are rising despite the evident violence done by them and continuous dissent by the people who are fighting for people.

He cited the example of the electoral victory of “Hindutva forces” in the Delhi University Teachers’ Association and Delhi University Students Union elections. 

“The state tries to disappear human beings by arresting them and removing them from the public eye. Just like they disappeared father Stan Swamy, Hany Babu and other political prisoners. The state is responsible for giving our constitutional rights but what we are given, TADA, UAPA and jail”, he added.

As a closing remark, he urged everyone to continue struggling even in this rising tide of repression irrespective of political and ideological differences.