185/3,FOURTH FLOOR, ZAKIR NAGAR, NEW DELHI-110025
But, because I tried to extend your liberties
Mine were curtailed.
Because I tried to rear the temple of freedom
For you all I was thrown into the cell of a felon’s jail…
Because I tried to give voice to truth,
I was condemned to silence…
You may say this is not a public question.
But it is!
CONDEMN AND EXPOSE THE FRAME UP OF DELHI UNIVERSITY
PROFESSOR GN SAIBABA!
RELEASE PROF. GN SAIBABA UNCONDITIONALLY
AND IMMEDIATELY!
At the heart of Delhi, when a Delhi University professor isclandestinely taken away by the police from another state (Maharashtra) anyonewho upholds norms and procedures, rule of law and above all, those veryfundamentals that define a democratic polity should tremble in indignation.
What happened to Dr. GN Saibaba on the 9 May 2014 when plainclothed personnel from Maharashtra abducted him is symptomatic of the larger acts of impunitywith which the police and paramilitary of the subcontinent have been conductingthemselves, with the sole difference that this is happening in a highly‘securitzed’ zone like the Delhi University campus which looks only through theCCTV; where everyone is watched paternally by a security set up of the DelhiPolice allegedly to maintain order if not the law.
It is beyond the level of the absurd to notethat the police had once barged into his house in September 2013 with a warrantthat was purportedly to seek ‘stolen property’ from his premises and then takeaway his belongings (laptop, hard discs etc) and once again visit him, in thefirst week of January 2014, this time with a notice for questioning and now finallyculminate in this abduction by men in plainclothes from the road in DelhiUniversity premises on 9 May 2014, when it is clear that he was alwaysavailable for the police for whatever kind of queries that they had.
And it’s astounding to see that the continuing harassment of Dr. GNSaibaba and his family went unabated despite several representations to theDelhi University, the Chancellor, as well as the NHRC, which incidentally hadtaken note of the gross violations on Dr. GN Saibaba during the illegal raid ofhis house.
Dr. Saibaba, who suffers from 90% disability and is wheelchair bound,was blindfolded and pushed into a vehicle. Yet why did the police want tosurreptitiously blindfold Dr. GN Saibaba and take him to unknown destinationwhen the police are on record as published in the media that they have beencamping in Delhi for almost a week? This is an admission of fear of public wrath as well as the self doubt on the side of the police as they have littleevidence to show off any of the charges that they are purportedly putting on him.
The action of the police is self explanatory as they would want to framehim up on trumped charges of alleged Maoist links based on ‘confessions’, asthey claim, from Hem Mishra, a JNU student and former CRPP executive member aswell as noted journalist and social activist Prashant Rahi who wasindependently working for the release of political prisoners. In fact arrestsand incarceration of activists who are vocal against the policies of the state basedon the so-called ‘confessions’ has been a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) ofan increasingly criminalizing and penalizing state the India is fast becoming.
After Dr. Saibaba was taken away blindfolded from within the universitypremises, it took a mysterious call to Vasantha, his partner, from some unknownlocation in Delhi disclosing it to her that her husband was being taken toGadchiroli in Maharashtra. For what case, under what charges and if there was awarrant, every aspect of the high handed action of the police was deliberatelykept incommunicado. Later Dr. GN Saibaba managed to talk to his daughter fromsome other phone that he managed while being in the airport where he disclosedthat he was being flown to Nagpur.
Only close to 6 pm in the evening was his driver,Mr. Deepak was released. It was Deepak who narrated how he and Dr, Saibaba wereblindfolded after a Santro car intercepted them on their before the School ofOpen Learning (SOL) while returning from Daulat Ram College after theexamination duty. Deepak was kept throughout blind folded in the Civil Linespolice station to be released later in the evening.
The manner in which Dr. GN Saibaba, a Delhi University professor hasbeen taken away in broad daylight is a challenge for all the people who standfor democratic values and freedoms of the most downtrodden sections of thesociety. That Dr. GN Saibaba—who is also the Joint Secretary of the RevolutionaryDemocratic Front (RDF) and one of the central conveners of the Forum AgainstWar on People—has been quite outspoken against the murderous loot and plunderof people’s resources, their livelihoods under the garb of development as isespoused by all the corporate sponsored political parties and business housesin India and abroad had also struck chord with the democratic sections of thepeople had certainly irked the powers that be in their wishful thinking to ‘winthe hearts and minds’ of the people in favour of their policies that can onlybreed destruction, destitution and death.
Yes winning the ‘hearts and minds’ isa euphemism for the crude and repressive coercion of the state to browbeat the opinionatedmiddle class in favour of the government of the day that has pledged itself to theinsatiable hunger for profit of the corporates. The mounting repression onworkers in the factories in urban centres, the targeting of rights defenders aswell as people’s activists such as the arbitrary arrests of activists andoffice bearers of the RDF are clear indications in this direction.
Recently thePresident of RDF in Uttarakhand, Jeevan Chandra, was similarly picked up on 5thof May in Uttarakhand for having ‘connections with the Maoists’ and calling forthe boycott of the elections. Dr. Saibaba could see this unfolding method inmadness of the state and had called for the rallying of all democratic andfreedom loving people of the subcontinent resolutely to defeat this war on the people.
Every voice that demands justice for Saibaba and his unconditionalrelease will be a step to further strengthen those convictions of ours to standfor what is good for the vast sections of the masses of the people and theirstruggle to keep alive those dreams for a better world free from all forms ofexploitation.
When this is being written CRPP received news from the lawyers in Ahericourt in Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra that Dr. Saibaba has been producedbefore the magistrate and was send to judicial custody.
We strongly demand that he be released unconditionally without delay. We at the CRPP call upon all freedom loving and democratic sections of the people,intellectuals, students, workers, rights defenders and one and all to condemnin unison the abduction of Dr. Saibaba and expose the ongoing war ofincarceration of thousands of people across the subcontinent.
In Solidarity,
SAR Geelani
President
Amit Bhattacharyya
Secretary General
Bojja Tharakam
Vice President
N. Venuh
Vice President
MN Ravunni
Vice President
P. Koya
Vice President
Rona Wilson
Secretary, Public Relations
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