Wrongful confinement, falsification of evidence are standard police procedures by JAVED IQBAL 9th Oct
Whistleblower and intelligence officer Sanjiv Bhatt was arrested for Section 341 (wrongful restraint), Section 342 (wrongful confinement), Section 189 (injury to public servant) and Section 193 and 195 (falsification of evidence) on 30 September 2011. There aren't many people who think his arrest isn't politically motivated, but if these charges were to be applied to the police machinery across the country, then a whole lot of them would/should be arrested, as "wrongful confinement" and "falsification of evidence" is almost standard operating procedure.
Jairam Khora, a sarpanch of Badapadar, Malkangiri was picked up by the Orissa police and handed over to the Chhattisgarh police on 14 September. He was detained without being charged, tortured and kept in custody for eight days and then released after he was forced to sign a statement saying he accompanied contractor B.K. Lala to pay off the Maoists on behalf of Essar Steel.
The police claims he was there on his free will, while the now-released Jairam Khora joins countless adivasis in Central India, to whom being "abducted" and "detained" by policemen is an event that takes place in frightening regularity. This is true especially for the thousands of people living in the interior forests of Bastar, who have given up on travelling to local markets, or travelling through police checkposts, over risks of being interrogated, beaten or arrested simply by association.
Recently, recorded conversations have appeared where a policeman, Mankar, is talking to adivasi teacher and alleged Maoist, Soni Sodi, who is also accused in the Essar-Maoist nexus case, claiming all the charges against her and her nephew Lingaram Kodopi (who was once locked up in the police toilet for 40 days) are fabricated. Soni Sodi was arrested in Delhi on 4 October and she fears for her life, when the same Mankar of Kirandul police station is on record telling her that "she should allow herself to be arrested and that she would be released after three months".
Now in the case of Jairam Khora and the Soni Sodi, can Section 341 (wrongful restraint), Section 342 (wrongful confinement) and Section 195 (falsification of evidence) be used on the police?
Usually, no one ever files a complaint against the police for fear of further harassment. And no one held by the police is ever released from a police station without signing a blank sheet of paper.
Meanwhile in Orissa, on 11 May 2010, 17 Kondh adivasis from the village of Samna in Narayanpatna block, were apprehended by Greyhounds, then blindfolded, handcuffed and put on a helicopter and taken to Salur police station in Vizianagaram, Andhra Pradesh. There, they were interrogated, beaten and threatened not to support either the adivasi Kondh land movement, which is fighting land alienation, the Chasi Mulia Adivasi Sangh or the Maoists who were beginning to build a base in the area as soon as state repression fell hard on the adivasi movement. They were let off on 14 May, after three days in custody.
Land movements, specifically, suffer from mountains of false cases that remain a handy method of coercion and suppression available in the supermarket of state violence. On 26 September this year, a group of workers alleged to be goons, had attacked anti-Posco protestors while the police watched quietly. When Satyabati Swain, mother of Ranjan Swain, one of the leaders of the anti-Posco movement, who was hurt in the attack, had gone to the police station to lodge a complaint about the assault, she was jailed for a case of "wrongful assembly" from 2008.
As of May 2011, there were a total of 178 cases on the people protesting against Posco. Seven more were added in the last five months, including a charge of murder against the leader of the movement, Abhay Sahu, who had already spent time in prison.