An open letter
to the Government of India, Members of the Judiciary, and All
Citizens,
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/opinion/edit-page/An-open-letter-Adivasis-need-speedy-and-impartial-justice/articleshow/19900162.cms
One of the most disastrous
consequences of the strife in the tribal areas of Central India is
that thousands of adivasi men and women remain imprisoned as
under-trials, often many years after being arrested, accused of
‘Naxalite/ Maoist’ offences.
The facts speak for themselves.
In Chhattisgarh, over two thousand
adivasis are currently in jail, charged with ‘Naxalite/Maoist’
offences. Many have been imprisoned for over two years without trial.
In Jharkhand, an even larger number of adivasis, possibly in excess of
five thousand, remain imprisoned as under-trials. The situation is
similar in many others states of central and eastern India currently
affected by armed conflict between the government and adivasi-linked
militant movements, namely Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh,
Maharashtra, Odisha and West Bengal. The adivasi undertrial population
may run into thousands in each of the states. Assessing the true scale
of the problem is inherently difficult, given that none of the police
or jail administrations are making comprehensive figures public, even
after RTI requests have been filed by concerned citizens. This opacity
adds to the injustice.
In each of these states, the adivasi
under-trials, and particularly those arrested under special security
statutes, face grave common handicaps that obstruct their
Constitutional right to a fair, speedy trial, to justice.
These include:
One, language barriers. The vast
majority of adivasi under-trials speak only adivasi languages, such as
Gondi and Halbi. However, few if any courts have official
interpreters/translators. This leaves the adivasis unable to
communicate directly with the Officers of the Court or otherwise
effectively make their case.
Two, the failure, in case after case,
for evidentiary material, such as captured arms or explosives, to be
promptly submitted in court by the security forces when they first
produce the detainees before the Magistrate, as the Magistrate can
statutorily direct the security forces to do when they level such
serious charges. Typically, the security personnel only make oral
statements that are accepted as the truth by the Magistrate concerned.
In the absence of prima facie proof, the grave risk of injustice being
done to innocent adivasis is self-evident.
Three, procedural barriers relating
to ‘Naxalite/Maoist’ and other security offences. Being charged with
such offences, the under-trials are not produced in the courts for
lengthy periods, on the grounds that there is not “sufficient police
guard” to escort them to the court. Owing to this, the trial does not
proceed for years together.
Four, other procedural barriers.
Since under-trials charged with ‘Naxalite/Maoist’ offences are only
held in Central Jails, many of them of them are transferred to jails
at a great distance from their homes and families. In Chhattisgarh,
for instance, nearly one hundred adivasi under-trials from Bastar have
been transferred to Durg or Raipur Central Jails, a distance of over
300 kilometers. The great distance, coupled with the poverty of most
adivasis, means that families are unable to regularly visit them or
provide them with vital emotional support. Moreover, as their cases
continue to be heard in the distant courts where they were arrested
and first produced, they are taken to court even less frequently than
earlier.
Five, the lack of proper legal
defence. Lawyers who visit ‘Naxal/Maoist’ under-trials in Chhattisgarh
are photographed by the authorities and their information listed in a
separate register, making lawyers reluctant to visit their clients. In
any event, many of the adivasi under-trials are dependent on legal-aid
lawyers who rarely go to meet the client or seek instructions
regarding the case. Often lawyers are careless in their conduct of
cases and are amenable to pressures from the police or prosecution.
All of this is a cause of harsh and
needless suffering to these under-trials, their families and their
communities, worsening their impoverishment and vulnerability.
In addition to the humanitarian
imperative, the prolonged failure to provide speedy and impartial
justice to these thousands of adivasi under-trials is damaging the
prospects for peace in India’s heartland – by leading adivasis to feel
that the Indian government does not treat them as full citizens and by
intensifying their generalized sense of alienation. It is telling that
in the widely publicized “Collector abduction” incidents of
Chhatisgarh and Odisha, one of the major demands raised by the
insurgents was speedy and fair trial for these thousands of jailed
adivasis, accused of being Naxalites/Maoists. Yet, virtually none of
the efforts belatedly agreed to by the state governments – such as the
‘High-powered Committee for review of the cases of Adivasi undertrials
in Chhattisgarh’, set up in mid-2012 under the aegis of Nirmala Buch,
the former top IAS officer – have come to fruition or been acted on to
any degree by the concerned governments.
More than anything else, the failure
to ensure justice for the adivasis is a grave blot on India’s human
rights record. Not only are we as a nation committed to democracy and
human rights, but our Constitution provides extensive safeguards and
rights to the adivasis that are being violated by not ensuring fair
and speedy trials for these thousands of adivasi under-trials.
On every count – whether humanitarian
or strategic – it is imperative that this prolonged failure to assure
our country’s adivasis of speedy, impartial justice be set right
immediately.
Justice is in everyone’s interest.
Hence, we the
undersigned, a large group of concerned Indians – including adivasi
leaders, jurists and lawyers, and public intellectuals – urge the
Union Government, the concerned State Governments, and the Supreme
Court to undertake to appoint a special Commission of eminent jurists
to oversee dedicated fast-track courts that hear these cases speedily
and impartially.
Sincerely,
V.R. Krishna Iyer,
former Justice of the Supreme Court of India, and Mahasweta Devi,
writer and activist
Swami Agnivesh,
activist
Nandita Das, actor and
director
Nitin Desai, former UN
Under-Secretary General
G.N. Devy, literary
critic and adivasi-rights activist
Jean Dreze, economist
Siddharth Dube, writer
Gladson Dungdung,
General Secretary, Jharkhand Human Rights Movement
Anand Grover, senior
advocate, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health
Ramachandra Guha,
historian
Girish Karnad,
playwright and director
Manish Kunjam, CPI
leader and former MLA from Bastar
Harsh Mander, activist
and writer
Vinod Mehta, editorial
chairman, Outlook
Arvind Netam, former
Union Minister and MP from Bastar
Rajinder Sachar, former
Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court and UN Special Rapporteur
B.D. Sharma, former
Commissioner for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes
Ramesh Sharma, Ekta
Parishad
Nandini Sundar,
sociologist
Father Stan Swamy,
activist
Tarun Tejpal, editor in
chief, Tehelka
Mukti Prakash Tirkey,
editor in chief, Dalit Adivasi Dunia
And,
Aadiyog, Lucknow.
Pushpa Achanta
Maharukh Adenwalla,
lawyer and rights activist
Alok Agrawal, Narmada
Bachao Andolan.
Ramesh Agrawal, Jan
Chetna Manch
S. Anand, Publisher,
Navayana
Ali Asghar
Ramani Atkuri, activist
Seema Azad, Dastak,
Lucknow
Lallan Baghel,
Chandigarh
Lal Bahadur, artist
Anand Balasubramanyam
Gautam Bandopadhyay,
Nadi Ghati Morcha
Moushumi Basu, New
Delhi
Amit Bhaduri, professor
emeritus, JNU
Madhu Bhaduri,
Ambassador of India, retired
Vimal Bhai, NAPM
Ajay Bharadwaj, New
Delhi
Sudha Bharadwaj, PUCL
Chhattisgarh
Rustom Bharucha, writer
Vinay Bhat, management
consultant
Bela Bhatia, TISS
Suresh Bhatt
M. Bharath Bhushan
Prashant Bhushan,
Supreme Court advocate
Praful Bidwai, Durgabai
Deshmukh Chair, Council for Social Development
Nisha Biswas, scientist
Priyanka Borpujari,
journalist
Rahul Bose, actor
P.A. Chacko
Shubha Chacko
Indira Chakravarthi,
Public Health Researcher
Uma Chakravarti,
professor of history
Nirmal Chandra, IIM,
Kolkata
Rajyashree Chandra,
Visiting Fellow, CSDS.
Uma V Chandru
Indrani Chatterjee,
historian
Yug Mohit Chaudhary
Shoma Chaudhury,
managing editor, Tehelka
Anuradha Chenoy, JNU
Kamal Chenoy, JNU
Gowru Chinappa, PUCL
Bangalore
Arati Chokshi
Chitrangada Choudhury,
journalist
Maria Aurora Couto,
writer
Dilip D' Souza, writer
Ajay Dandekar, Central
University, Gujarat
Lalita Das
Mamata Dash
Tushar Dash, Vasundhara
Siddhartha Deb, writer
Aditi Desai, social
anthropologist
Kartik Desai, activist
Sagar Dhara
Arundhati Dhuru
Gabrielle Dietrich,
Penmurimai Iyakkam
Bernard D'Mello
Madhumita Dutta
Meher Engineer,
independent scientist
Shailesh Gandhi, RTI
activist and former Central Information Commissioner
Tanushree Gangopadhyay,
journalist
Manan Ganguli, UK
Subhash Gatade, New
Socialist Initiative
Goldy George, Dalit
Mukti Morcha
Shalini Gera, activist
Ravinder Goel, Delhi
University
Shankar Gopalkrishnan,
Campaign for Survival and Dignity
Ashish Gupta, CDRO, New
Delhi
Ananth Guruswamy,
Amnesty International India
Kaveri Indira,
Bangalore
Shamsul Islam, Delhi
University
Ravikiran Jain, Senior
Advocate, Allahabad
Jasveen Jairath, HAMDS,
Hyderabad
Vasundhara Jairath
Smarajit Jana,
Sonagachi Research and Training Institute
Nityanand Jayaraman,
Chennai
Prakash Jha, film
director
Rajeev Jhaveri
Chidambaram K, Advocate
Sudhir Kakar,
psychoanalyst and scholar
Katharina
Poggendorf-Kakar, scholar
Vibha Kamat
Mira Kamdar, author
Pralay Kanungo, JNU
Amar Kanwar, New Delhi.
D.W. Karuna, researcher
Suvir Kaul, A. M.
Rosenthal Professor, Department of English, University of Pennsylvania
Poonam Kaushik,
advocate
Shashant Kela, writer
Sanober Keshawar, TISS
Lateef Mohammed Khan
Suman Khurana
Suhas Kolhekar, NAPM
Puneet Kohli, Berkeley
Law, University of California, Berkeley
Kavita Krishnan, AIPWA
Arun Kumar, economist
Himanshu Kumar,
activist
Madhuresh Kumar, NAPM
Sushil Kumar
Vikram Lal, Common
Cause
Jinee Lokaneeta
Ania Loomba, Catherine
Bryson Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania
Madhuri, Jagrit Adivasi
Dalit Sangathan
Kamayani Bali Mahabal
George Mathew
Madhu Mehra, lawyer
Kalpana Mehta
Ketan Mehta, film
director
Nivedita Menon, scholar
Raza Mir, Professor of
Management, Cotsakos College of Business, William Paterson University
Saeed Mirza, film
director
Pankaj Mishra, writer
Anurag Modi, Shramik
Adivasi Sangathan
Shamim Modi
Gautam Mody, NTUI
Sujata Mody
Mrituinjoy Mohanty, IIM
Kolkata.
Aunohita Mojumdar,
journalist
Roger Moody
Vipul Mudgal,
journalist
Madhusree Mukherjeee
Laxmi Murthy
Arundati Nag
Sankara Narayanan
Karthik Navayan
Sharanya Nayak, HUMANE,
Koraput
Govind Nihalani, film
director
Anjali Noronha,
educationist
Felix Padel
Sandeep Pandey
Jonathan Parry
Pujya Pascal
Pravin Patel, Tribal
Welfare Society
Shashibhushan Pathak,
Jharkhand
Sudhir Pattnaik
Shiraz Bulsara Prabhu,
Kashtakari Sanghatana
Jyoti Punwani,
journalist
Sharmila Purakayastha
N. Raghuram,
Indraprastha University
Prashant Rahi,
Committee for Release of Political Prisoners
SS Rajgopalan
Sudha Ramalingam, PUCL,
Tamilnadu
K. Babu Rao
Nandini Rao
Ramdas Rao, PUCL,
Karnataka
Rosemary, Nagaland
University
Ashim Roy, New Trade
Union Initiative
Dunu Roy
Kirity Roy, MASUM, West
Bengal
Anil Sadgopal,
educationist
Rajendra K Sail, former President,
Chhattisgarh PUCL
Madhu Sarin
Lt. Col. Deepak Sarkar
Surajit Sarkar
PA Sebastian, advocate
Rakhi Sehgal, trade
unionist
Sukla Sen
Sunanda Sen, economist
Geeta Seshu
Meena Saraswathi Seshu,
Center for Advocacy on Stigma and Marginalisation
Teesta Setalvaad, human
rights campaigner
Piyush Sethia
Kiran Shaheen,
journalist
Neelima Sharma, artist
Aruna Shekhar
Snehal Shingavi,
assistant professor of English, university of Texas, Austin
Abhay Shukla
SP Shukla, Former
Commerce Secretary
Dilip Simeon, historian
and activist
Anurag Singh,
Janmadhyam
Dayanita Singh,
photographer
Jagmohan Singh, AFDR,
Punjab
Mahipal Singh, PUCL
Delhi
Ramneek Singh
Ujwal Kumar Singh,
Delhi University
Satya Sivaraman
Kavita Srivastava, PUCL.
Sunilam
Pyoli Swatija, advocate
Tarun Tahiliani,
fashion designer
Anuradha Talwar,
Paschim Bang Khet Majdoor Samiti
Ashwini Tambe,
Associate Professor, Dept. of Women’s Studies, University of
Maryland-College Park
Shivani Taneja,
educationist
Dolly Thakore, stage
actress
Ulag Thyagarajan
Rajive Tiwari
Nilita Vachani, writer
and film-maker
Minnie Vaid
Rahul Varman, IIT
Kanpur
Aniruddhan Vasudevan,
activist
Velerian
Kamala Visweswaran,
associate professor, University of Texas, Austin
Major Gen. (Retd.) SG
Vombatkere
Brahma Prakash Yadav,
advocate
6th May 2013