Express News Service
Puducherry, January 2
HUMAN Rights forums in Puducherry adopted a resolution seeking the immediate release of Dr Binayak Sen from imprisonment with charges against him withdrawn.
At a meeting organized by the Federation for People’s Rights at Chamber de Commerce hall on Sunday, they stressed the need for a thorough inquiry and demanded adequate compensation to Dr Binayak Sen for being deprived of him and his family for being subjected to the most inhumane mental torture and persecution.
The forum expressed shock at the conviction of well-known public health doctor and human rights worker Dr Binayak Sen by a Raipur sessions court on charges of ‘sedition’ and ‘waging war against the Indian State’. The conviction carries a sentence of life imprisonment – a drastic and completely unjust fate – to be handed out to one India’s finest social activists.
“We call upon the higher Indian judiciary to uphold principles of law, justice and the rights enshrined in the Indian Constitution and undo the severe damage done to the reputation of the judiciary itself through the Raipur court’s flawed judgment,” they said.
The charges against Dr Binayak Sen, of allegedly aiding outlawed Maoist rebels in Chhattisgarh, have not been corroborated by any of the witnesses or evidence produced in court so far. On the contrary there have been numerous instances of the prosecution resorting to use of fabricated documents’ and contradictory testimonies to press its case said the speakers.
The forum further stated that they believed that the charges against Dr Binayak Sen, made under draconian ‘anti-terrorist’ laws, are trumped up and intended to ‘punish’ him for his outspoken criticism of the Chhattisgarh government for its human rights violations against its own tribal populations. Dr Binayak Sen, a heart patient, has already spent over two years in prison from May 2007 to May 2009 and was released on bail by the Supreme Court of India.
That the world’s largest democratic country cannot tolerate criticism and non-violent human rights activism is a matter of shame to Indian citizens everywhere and this attitude of intolerance needs to be roundly condemned. Such low quality of justice, routinely delivered in our courts, is indeed itself a serious threat to Indian democracy, they observed.
The participants include Nara Kalainathan, MLA, State Secretary, CPI, G Sugumaran, Secretary, Federation for People’s Rights, Prof A Marx, President, People’s Union for Human Rights (PUHR), Tamilnadu Chapter, Prof Praba Kalvimani, Co-ordinator, Irula Tribal Protection Movement, R Azhagiri, President, Tamils National Movement, G A Jaganathan, Vice-convener, Village Pancahayat Presidents Co-ordinating Federation, M A Asraf, District President, Tamil Nadu Muslim Munnetra Kazhagam (TMMK), I Mohammad Saleem, District Secretary, Manithaneya Makkal Katchi, G S Chandran, President, Singaravelar Munnetra Kazhagam, Joseph Victor Raj, National Joint Secretary, INSAF, C Murthy, Convener, Ambedkar Peoples Force, K Ramkumar, President, Puducherry Tribal Peoples Federation.
The New Indian Express / 03.01.2011
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