Release Murali Kannampilly alias Ajith immediately from Pune High Security Central Jail which alone can save his life
Democratic rights activists,
intellectuals and civil liberties committees demand the Government of
Maharashtra and the Central Government
By now, people in all over the country
and the world have come to know that Com. K Muraleedharan was admitted
in a Pune government hospital since he was suffering with severe chest
pain. Since the police have not allowed an attendant as advised by the
doctors attending him, he has taken up a hunger strike. Then the Police,
against the advice of the doctors, sent him back forcing him to
withdraw the hunger strike. Now his health is in precarious condition in
the prison.
So, along with Prof. Noam Chomsky and
other democratic rights activists all over the country and the world, we
demand that either he be given an interim bail or released to get him
admitted in the hospital which alone can save his life. He has already
undergone a bypass surgery for his heart ailment. In this context we
give a brief profile of Com. K Muraleedharan here.
Murali Kannampilly, or K Muraleedharan,
or Comrade Ajith as he is more commonly known (the alias he uses when
writing) was a revolutionary who was aligned with Communist politics
since his early student days and became attracted to the Naxalite
movement while he was pursuing his graduation in engineering. Murali,
who had joined the movement as a student, later shined as a teacher in
the same movement- one of the finest scholars in political economy and
Maoist ideology. He had worked with several comrades, including Com. S A
Roof, an undaunted Maoist leader.
He was strongly opposed to the
bourgeois idealist line that K Venu was trying to impose on the CRC-CPI
(ML) in Kerala and worked tirelessly to sustain and grow the
revolutionary movement there. His major political works include Bhumi,
Jati, Bandhanam (Land, Caste and Bondage), a path-breaking study on
land, reforms, caste and the agrarian relations in Kerala, Against
Avakianism an ideological critique of Bob Avakian, the
dogmatic-revisionist leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party of the
USA. As one of the leading Maoist thinkers and theoreticians, Ajith has
written several significant articles and replies on issues related to
gender and caste from a Maoist perspective. He was the editor of the
international magazine A World to Win, published by the Revolutionary
International Movement, a coordinating center of various Maoist parties
and forces across the world. An interesting aside- as a young kid who
used to travel with his father Karunakara Menon Kannampilly, Counsellor,
Indian Embassy, Peking, (1958-61), the People’s Republic of China, once
had the rare opportunity to garland Chairman Mao.
He was arrested by the ATS in Pune in May
last year, and has since been in the Yerwada prison there. Already a
heart patient who had undergone a bypass surgery, he was admitted to the
hospital on the fifth of this month following chest pain. However, the
authorities have denied him even an attendant and he was later taken
back to the prison cell without proper treatment. In a critical stage
where timely and expert treatment is crucial, the authorities are
inhumanely denying even these basic rights. No charges have been framed
against Murali, other than booking him under the draconian Unlawful
Activities Prevention Act (UAPA). He is one of the many victims of this
draconian law, where people could be arrested for any reason and held
almost indefinitely without any evidence or criminal cases being
registered against them. In fact, Murali has been produced before the
court only once in the past 15 months of imprisonment.
Human rights activists are urging that
the authorities urgently ensure expert treatment to Murali, and allow,
at the very least, his son to stay and help him as an attendant or
otherwise grant him bail on medical grounds. A recent statement, signed
by globally renowned scholars, academics and human rights advocates
including Noam Chomsky, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Partha Chatterjee,
Anand Teltumbde, Prabhat Patnaik, Bernard D’Mello, Meena Kandasamy
calling upon the authorities “to ensure a fair, transparent and speedy
trial of Muraleedharan or release him on bail” is reflective of
solidarity and protest at an international level against the Indian
state’s intent to silence or even to annihilate political prisoners and
voices of dissent.
Prof. G Haragopal, Defense Committee, Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners
Varavara Rao, President, Revolutionary Democratic Front, Founder, Revolutionary Writers Association
Rajkishore, General Secretary, RDFProf. G N Saibaba, Deputy Secretary, RDF
Varalakshmi, Secretary, Virasam (Revolutionary Writers Association)
Prof C Sheshayya, President, APCLC
Prof. G Lakshman, President, Telengana Civil Liberties Committee.
Hyderabad
8th September 2016
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