A group of activists and social workers from Jharkhand issued a statement on Thursday to condemn the police action against several activists across the country two days ago. One of the locations raided by the Pune Police on Tuesday was the Ranchi home of Stan Swamy, an 83-year-old Catholic priest and human rights activist who works in the state.
In the statement, the group said the action was an attempt by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party to “invent a false enemy” and “engage in scaremongering in order to polarise the 2019 elections in its favour”. They called the action an attempt to “strike terror among those who are fighting for justice for the marginalised and give voice to the voiceless”.
The group defended Swamy as an “exceptionally gentle, honest and public-spirited person”. The raid at his home was “highly objectionable”, they said, adding that he was not told of the charges against him. The allegations were a “concocted story” that seems to be “part of a larger propaganda” aimed at stifling criticism, the statement read.
Protestors also gathered in Ranchi to demonstrate against the raid and arrests.
On Tuesday morning, teams of Pune Police raided the homes of several activists in Mumbai, Ranchi, Hyderabad, Delhi, Faridabad and Goa and arrested five of them by the end of the day. The action was in connection with investigations into a public meeting organised before caste-related violence erupted at Bhima Koregaon near Pune on January 1.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court stayed the transit remand of the activists and ordered that they would be under house arrest till the next hearing on September 6. Police had already taken three of the five arrested activists to Pune by then.
Swamy was not among those arrested. He issued a statement on Wednesday, claiming that police had not provided him a Hindi copy of the raid documents or the First Information Report that they claimed he was named in. He had accused the government of “silencing the people who are working for the poor, marginalised and the voiceless”.
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