 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Five human rights activists were recently arrested on charges of inciting violence during the Bhima-Koregao celebrations. These activists are also being alleged to have Maoist links, and there's also talks of a letter being found in the possession, which talks of a bid to assassinate Prime Minister Narendra Modi. So today we have with us civil rights activists Gautam Navlakhar to talk about the charges against these activists and the draconian laws that have been used to put them in prison. So hello Gautam. Thank you. Firstly, talking about this letter, which now we have also seen Sharad Pawar talking about saying that it doesn't really follow protocol for the police to release the contents of such a letter to the public without any internal investigations and perhaps it's a bid to gain sympathy. So what do you think about that? Well, Mr. Sharad Pawar has said it. And it seems very clear from the contents of the letter which have been made public. And I would like to compliment the police for sharing the contents of the letter with the Indian public because the letter makes it clear that it is one of the most unlikely plot aimed at assassinating a Prime Minister if it was supposed to be that. It's one of the most ridiculous letters I have come across especially from so-called very dreaded underground movement. So and I think I agree with Sharad Pawar that not only does it break protocol much more than that its authenticity has yet to be established. And this letter is one of the primary evidences against these activists. Talking about these activists, while they are being blamed for this Bhima Kurega violence, we know that the two Hindutva leaders who were largely responsible, Milindig Bote and Sambaji Bheede, they are still free. Bheede was not even called for questioning. And these activists, the work they have been doing is of course can be seen as threatening to the government because they were also involved very active in Gachiroli in land rights issues and human rights issues. So what do you think is the larger motive of this? Is there a larger motive to this, rather than just the Bhima Kurega violence? Well, let's look at the two issues which are very important. They have referred to the fact that the violence in Bhima Kurega on January 1st, was a result of conspiracy, which was engineered by these so-called 5% and maybe they will drag some other people also into this dragnet. This flies in the face of facts as we know it because the violence that took place on 1st was directed against Dalits. It was not the Dalits who were coming to commemorate 200th anniversary of victory over Peshwas by the Mahar, largely Mahar army of the British to commemorate that. They had no reason to engage in violence when they had been gathering there for years. Since 1927, when Dr. Ambedkar started this practice. This year, we knew that there would be much larger turnout also primarily because of its 200th anniversary, the bicentenary of Bhima Kurega. So Dalits had no reason to. In fact, that everything to gain from a peaceful if that had been allowed to be held that would actually the political message would have been far bigger an issue than what happened later. I mean, by allowing the Hindutva forces, which were led by I mean, which leaders are Millindegbote and Sambhaji Bheede. Sambhaji Bheede is personally very close to our Prime Minister, it seems. So that's one of the reasons why he's not been touched. But the important thing is that there are court orders, both the lower court, high court as well as the Supreme Court on February 20th of this year, where it admonished the Maharashtra police that on the one hand, you say that Ekbote and others are evading arrest, whereas they are going about it and you are making no efforts and efforts to arrest them. So they ordered that instead of making excuses, they should go and arrest the person who had been mentioned in the FIR, which they didn't follow because Sambhaji Bheede still remains scot-free and Millindegbote is out. No, he was in Bheede. So it also depends on what kind of sections or what sections of law that were invoked against Ekbote and Bheede in contrast to, for fomenting violence, for actually fomenting violence. In contrast to these five who have been, I believe, been charged under a fictitious claim of offenses against them without there being any link or fact of any link between the violence that took place at the hands of the Hindut forces and these five people who were actually part of the organizers, I mean, they played, Sudhir Dhavle played an important role in organizing this rally. He was one of the leading organizers of it and it was perfectly legitimate what he engaged in. So it depends on what kind of charge he is because here we see these people have been charged with the most draconian provisions of law in contrast to the provisions of law invoked for those who actually engaged in violence. There is no claim of violence on them. There is not a proof that they engaged in violence or they encouraged people to plot to create violence on the bicentry when families would be present, consider the way in which the police acts. This when it went to arrest Millindegbhote, Millindegbhote claimed that he was sitting in puja and the police would have to wait. Our police now which has become so faithful waited for two hours till he finished his puja and then arrested. When they went to arrest Sudhir Dhavle, he was not, he was in his night pajamas, he was not even allowed to change his clothes, they just dragged them out and took him into prison. I mean this shows also that the police are sympathetic towards the Hindutva elements who are actually involved in Bhima Koregaon violence and therefore they are doing nothing to bring them to book but they are going out of their way to change the narrative, divert attention from the real culprits and arrest people under the most draconian laws. Now what does it mean if once unlawful activities prevention act or provisions are invoked? Look at it, I mean the provisions that have been invoked against them for unlawful activities prevention act, they are sections 13, 16, 17, 18, 18, B, 38, 39, 40. Each one of them more dreadful than the other. The whole thing about unlawful activities prevention act as it was true of Tata and Pota is that it creates an offense, allows for the authorities to ban an organization in the name of curbing that offense and then brings under its dragnet everybody that they can by suggesting that they have some link either they are members or supporters or sympathizers or they are helping a banned organization. This is precisely what happened in the infamous Gadchiroli case where five people were given life in prison and including Jee and Sai Baba, Prasanth Rahi, Hemishra, Pandu, Narot and Tikri, Mahesh Tikri I think these five people were given and Vijay Tikri has been given ten years rigorous imprint. The only basis for it is membership of an unlawful organization. There was no evidence of them having committed any crime or even plotting to create a crime but the sheer fact that they could be made to appear as being members or supporters of a banned organization and that too based on so-called recovery of banned literature. The banned literature there is no such thing under Indian jurisprudence which is called banned literature. Of course the Supreme Court also says that just made by membership of a banned organization is no grounds for. But what unlawful activities prevention act does is that once you ban an organization it allows for two things it can drag in people that you want to ensnare and charge with all kind of charges as has happened in this case and it was true of the Gadchiroli case in which J. N. Saiba and others were implicated. Here are five people. Sudeed Dhamle is a very well-known Dalit activist, ideologue writer and literary figure. Sureen Gardling is a practicing lawyer of 25 years and he has been defending the most downtrodden and those who are most marginalized for whom very few people are willing to come forward. He is defending them. He was defending many U.S.P.A. cases. Shoma Sen teaches English and yes she is an activist in civil liberties and social movements as well as women's rights movement. And then you have Mahesh Rawat who has nothing to do with it. His case is related actually to Gadchiroli because he has worked there as one of the research fellows who was selected by the prime ministers to implement all the rural development programs in Gadchiroli. He worked for them. He has been active actually in the Visthapan Virodi Janandolan in Gadchiroli which is aimed at stopping, stalling and scuttling attempts to increase mining operation in Gadchiroli. In fact, there are 27 mining licenses against which the people are agitating and exactly as in Niamgiri, please remember exactly as in Niamgiri, Surajgarh Hilltop is a sacred place and there is a Supreme Court order very clearly spells out in the Urisa mining case where the layout that it is Gram Sabha's right to decide what is sacred, religious, what activities can affect their religious practice, etc., ignoring all the, without holding even a public hearing properly. In fact, doing it in such a way that it's, I mean it did not allow people to participate in a public hearing in Surajgarh. They have been pushing for increasing mining and mining production and clamping down on everybody who protests accusing them of being Maoist. Now once Unlawful Activities Prevention Act comes into play and once you have banned an organization, it seems that anybody who has anything to say can be accused of being a Maoist and people get scared, yes, and they get scared by being associated with Maoist. I would like to point out that despite prescription of an organization, an idea cannot be proscribed, an ideology cannot be proscribed. And this is something which is there in the Supreme Court of judgments one after another which make it very clear that advocacy of an ideology on an idea including violence is not a crime, it's inciting violence which is a crime. Given this as a principle, it's very clear that if somebody espouses or somebody writes in favor of or suddenly says that what is being done to the Maoist or people who are being accused of Maoist is unfair, wrong, and so on and so forth, they are fully justified. I mean people have a right to believe in the ideology of Godse who is an assassin of Gandhi, civil liberties movements and all have not come out and said please ban these people and put them behind bars, that would be absurd. If an idea is absurd, it will sink, but if an idea carries weight, that is what scares the authorities. And I think what has happened in this particular case, it is that both in Karchiroli and Bhimakoregaon, the protests, the resistance is making the government very, very nervous because neither the Adivasis are giving up in Karchiroli, their protests and resistance against the mining corporations that are trying to move in a big way, which would completely transform and destroy one of the prime forests that we have, especially in this day and age when we talk about climate change. My point is that Karchiroli, where the Adivasis are resisting, and please remember when the judge passed his judgment in the Karchiroli case, he made this point that these people are thwarting development and they are coming in the way of development. And one of the reasons for the problems that Karchiroli Adivasis faces is because of lack of development. Not even once he asked whether the development that the Adivasis wanted is the development that the government is imposing on them or not. And if you look at Bhimakoregaon similarly, where again there is been, I mean the protests and the resistance against it and demand for bringing the real culprits to book has galvanized a large section of the population and they are not giving up, they are not giving up. So I think that these calls for taking a serious look at unlawful activities prevention act, which is worse than Tata and Pota. It's also I think important to point out that when important provision of Pota was actually removed which called about, which illegalized communal clashes, inciting of communal clashes as being, was one of the sections which was actually removed from UAPA, under which we could have had Milindegbote and all of which, it could have been put against them, but that section was removed. Not only that section, I mean it's very interesting that the Tata and Pota definition of terror acts and terrorism is identical in UAPA. They also did away with one clause of Pota, which was that if any police officer engages in malicious prosecution, that police officer can be prosecuted under that act. Now this too was removed from Unlawful Activities Prevention Act. Quite apart from that actually there is nothing like Unlawful Activities Prevention Act. If you compare UAPA with Tata and Pota, Tata and Pota are a pale reflection of Unlawful Activities Prevention Act as well as its draconian provisions for two reasons. One, there is no sunset clause in Unlawful Activities Prevention Act unlike Tata and Pota, which if not renewed, they would lapse. The second is because it's a permanent act and because there was Unlawful Activities Prevention Act in 1967, which dealt with Unlawful and you made terrorist activities also part of this act, this act has become an omnibus act in itself and it creates two categories of banned organization. One banned as Unlawful for what they claim, preaching or propagating say, secession or separatist, you know, support for separatist movements, etc., etc. And the other is terrorist act, which is divided, defined as acts which threaten or likely to threaten the integrity and sovereignty of the state and things so on and so forth. My point is that when you have such an omnibus act, which has such provisions from Unlawful to terrorist, what this act does is that allows the police to charge a person even with the most fictitious or fake information or evidence that they can make knowing fully well that they can retain a person in the police custody for more than 30 days if they need, which is dangerous in itself because the normal Indian penal code does not allow that plus it may be years before you get bail because getting bail once Unlawful Activities Prevention Act is invoked is next to impossible, judges are very of giving bail because the law also abridges. There is a provision here that without the concurrence of the prosecutor, the bail cannot be given to an accused. The point is that this becomes a way in which you keep a person incarcerated, a person whom you dislike or you fear or whose activities you fear thinking that it is going to galvanize opposition to the government etc. So Unlawful Activities Prevention Act may not result in conviction, it really does because even in the semi-cases you will notice that 75 to 80% of the people who have been charged under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act for various crimes have been acquitted as the Jamiya Milia Teachers Association in their reports and documentation have brought out so very well. Unlawful Activities Prevention Act like Tata and Pota is not meant primarily to ensure higher conviction rates rather to enable the police to keep imprisoned those people or those groups silence those groups that it finds problematic for its own reason and this allows them to keep a person behind bars without the bother of a trial as a form of punishment for years together. And this is despite the Supreme Court pontificating that bail is a right not jail, well it seems that the rich, the privileged and the powerful can avail of this provision that the Supreme Court has spelled out of bail whereas ordinary citizens of this country and especially those who have been condemned and declared as criminals by the sheer fact that UAPA has been invoked against them, they have to suffer incarceration for years together. The primary example of that is committing Jain Sahib Aba who despite being 90% disabled has been in prison for a very long time. So thank you Gautam for joining us today and thank you for watching next clip. Thank you so much.