November 20, 2012
Press Statement
Condemnation of the
Illegal and Wrongful Arrest
Communalism Combat and
SAHMAT condemn the illegal and arbitrary arrests of two young women in
Palghar, Maharashtra for their Facebook message disapproving the coercive
shutdown of the city of Mumbai and other parts of Maharashtra following
the death of the Shiv Sena Chief Shri Bal Thackeray. The Thane rural
police have behaved arbitrarily and against the law for which the
policemen involved must be prosecuted. Shiv Sena goons also vandalized a
clinic being run by an uncle of one of the girls. It is condemnable that
under the Congress-NCP Government it was not the vandals who destroyed
medical equipment and threatened the patients at Palghar who were promptly
acted against but two young girls who have every right to express their
opinion. Today’s media reports state that nine persons have been arrested
for the attack on the Medical Clinic but no details have been made
available, including the names of the criminals.
The
illegal arrest of two young girls in Palghar is one more instance of the
growing politics of intimidation threat and violence that are not firmly
dealt with by the authorities. Even today the reaction of the Maharashtra
police does not inspire confidence and is the most recent in a long list
of actions undertaken by the police under the IT Act which are
questionable. It is clear from media reports that there is nothing
remotely offensive or anything pertaining to religious sentiments in the
message posted by one of the women. This is a clear case of misuse of the
IT Act, once again underlining the need for a thorough review of some of
its provisions that are open to gross misuse. We demand the immediate
withdrawal of the false cases against the young women, arrest of those
responsible for attacking the clinic and action against the police
officials responsible for the arrests.
We
would also like to record that on Wednesday, November 14 2012, an OB Van
of Television Today was vandalised when it was shooting visuals of Shiv
Sainiks removing decorative Diwali lanterns outside Bal Thackeray’s
residence. The media accorded minimal coverage to this incident of
vandalism and the FIR registered by the media organisation against
miscreants who are “unknown persons.” This combined strategy of both the
organisers of mobs and the police in deliberately failing to identify
offenders is the time-tested technique of ensuring that no criminal
prosecutions are launched nor the guilty punished. This was an attack on
press freedom.
Justice P B Sawant, Justice Kolse Patil, Justice Hosbet Suresh,Teesta
Setalvad, Ram Rahman, Javed Anand, MK Raina, Rajendra Prasad, Madhu
Prasad, CP Chandrasekhar, Madangopal Singh, Vivan Sundaram, Dr. P.K.
Shukla, Sohail Hashmi, Parthiv Shah, Suresh Bhosale, Sumedh Jadhav, Jyoti
Punwani, Nandan Maluste, Naresh Fernandes, Ravi Kulkarni, Shakuntala
Kulkarni, Mrinmayee Kulkarni, Abhishek Agrawal, Kumar Ketkar, Amili
Setalvad, Nakul Mehta, Navroz Seervai, Dolphy D’Souza, Arpana Caur, Bindu
Desai, Kiran Nagarkar, Nilima Sheikh, Romila Thapar, Prabhat Patnaik, Wasi
Hyder, Archana Prasad, Sashi Kumar, Anil Bhatti, Lata Singh, Zoya Hasan,
N.K. Sharma, Rahul Verma, Ruchira Gupta, Badri Raina, DN Jha, Shakti Kak,
Saeed Mirza, Virender Saini, Utsa Patnaik, Sudhanva Deshpande, Moloyshree
Hashmi, Arjun Dev, Jayati Ghosh, Indira Chandrasekhar, Mihiri
Bhattacharya, Malini Bhattacharya, MMP Singh,
S. Kalidas.
Shripad Dharmadhikary, Ammu Abraham, Anand Patwardhan, Shilpa Gupta, Ahmad
Cameron, Shadi Katyalsearch, Devinder Thakur.
COMMUNALISM COMBAT
Nirant, Juhu Tara Road,
Juhu, Santacruz (W),
Mumbai - 400049
email: [email protected]
SAHMAT
Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust
29, Feroze Shah Road,New Delhi-110001
Telephone- 23381276/ 23070787
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