Condemn the media trail against Chhatradhar Mahato

[Rights Support Centre]

Date: Sun, Oct 4 2009 10:54 am
From: Political Prisoners


*COMMITTEE FOR THE RELEASE OF POLITICAL PRISONERS*

185/3, FOURTH FLOOR ZAKIR NAGAR, NEW DELHI-25

*Condemn strongly the malicious media trial of Chhatradhar Mahato!*

*The West Bengal Government cannot violate laws and procedures to deny
Chhatradhar Mahato his right to all legally guarenteed safeguards until
proven guilty!   *

The Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners notes with great
concern that the government of West Bengal has started unleashing a vivcious
character assassination campaign against Chhatradhar Mahato, the leader of
the People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities, that have been
spearheading the Lalgarh movement.  It is this vicious media trial indulged
in by sections of the media and the administration, particularly by
Bhupindar Singh, DG Police, Ardhendu Sen, Home Secretary and Ashok Mohan
Chakraborty, Chief Secretary, Government of West Bengal, ever since he was
abducted and arrested by the Special Task Force of WB police on 26 September
2009 from Lalgarh.



While arresting him, the police had broken law on two grounds. It had
violated section 50-A of the Cr.PC by arresting him without providing the
arrest memo, explaining reasons of arrest and nine other things which are
mandatory under Supreme Court order(Justice D.K. Basu vs. Government of West
Bengal, 1996); by posing themselves as scribes which is not permissible
under the law, thereby acting as imposters which is punishable under the
law; and by planting 20 to 22 cooked-up cases against him and booking him
under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act. The CRPP strongly condemn such
actions made by the administration and assert that the WB government is
indulging in such slander campaigns with the aim of maligning the Lalgarh
movement that had already drawn universal acclaim from different parts of
the world.



Very recently, it has started another vicious campaign—that of character
assassination of this leader of the people’s movement. The information that
police claimed to have got from Chhatradhar are:

1) Mahato  has a life insurance policy of Rs.1 crore;

2) He owns a house in Mayurbhanj in Orissa;

3) That the PCAPA has a bank account;

4) A person from Calcutta donated Rs.1.25 lakhs to Mahato’s committee;

5) Police have got names of 160 sympathizers of the committee, including
over 50 from Kolkata.



The DGP said that Mahato made these confessions in custody and also admitted
to Maoist links. Rights activists and intellectuals in Kolkata were quick to
debunk the claim, saying that the ‘confessions’ were extracted through
coercion(*The Times of India*,  01-10-09; *The telegraph*,  01-10-09).



It goes against the law of this land to leak to the press the so-called
confessions made by Chhatradhar Mahato. No confession can stand in a court
of law as evidence against the accused. So it is the criminal intent of the
senior police officials and the home secretary and the chief secretary to
influence the court and the public opinion even before the commencement of
the legal proceedings on Mahato in the court of law. This is nothing but
condemning someone as guilty through the media even before he is given a
chance to defend himself. Besides the violation of the law of the land it is
also violation of the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights
to which India is also a signatory. This vicious media trial would
stigmatize the right of Chhatradhar Mahato to be presumed innocent until
proven guilty on charges before a court of law. CRPP strongly condemn such
vicious propaganda of the state and demand criminal proceedings against all
such elements who have misused their positions of power to incriminate
illegally a leader of a people's movement. We also demand legal action
against all such media houses who have facilitated this despicable act of
the governemnt with criminal intent.



Many of these ‘charges’ that the administration in a despicable manner have
been raising through a section of the media have been proved to be patently
false with the facts about Chhatradhar Mahato pouring in. First, Chhatradhar
does not have such an insurance policy. He himself owns some bighas of
ancestral land and used to sell saal leaves. His hut is a broken one; the
tube-well in front of his house, like many other tube-wells, hardly works.
As he got busy with the movement, he was forced to send his two sons—one
reading in Class VI and VII—to sell leaves, which means that the business
was not going well. He has an ancestral house in Mayurbhanj. It is a
two-storied house, and after division among the members, he was left with
only one room in that house.  There were times when he literally had to
depend on monetary help from the committee to have daily meals. He wears
spectacles, one band of which got broken, and he had to go without glasses
for days until the committee helped him with money to buy a fresh pair of
bands.  Journalists who went to his house in Amlia village know how ‘rich’
he is.  Second, that the committee has a bank account is quite natural and
only betrays its transparency.  It was well-known and there was nothing
secretive about it. Third, the Lalgarh Manch(forum) has categorically
declared at a press conference held on 1 October in Kolkata that they did
try to express their solidarity with the movement by various means, besides
sending some money; they are sorry to say that they could not do more.
Didn’t people send assistance to Spain during the fight against fascist
Franco, or to Cuba or to Vietnam? What is illegal then about sending money
or medicine to Lalgarh? Fourth, if Mahato maintained contact with the
Maoists before ban was imposed on the Maoist party, there was nothing
illegal about it. What the administration is actually trying to do is
somehow to establish the link between Mahato/PCAPA  and the Maoists and then
to extend that link with the urban intellectuals , students and the Maoists.




That vicious game became clear in the last one or two days. The government
officials went on declaring that some Kolkata intellectuals had assisted
Mahato not only by donating money, but also by giving advice on the
direction of the movement. Those intellectuals would be called for
questioning, to be brought to book and might be booked under the UAPA. These
are pure threats, acts of intimidation which should not go unprotested and
unchallenged. In fact, the WB government has taken the cue from
P.Chidambaran, Central Home Minister, who had recently threatened those who,
in his eyes, are sympathetic to the cause of the Maoists and arrogantly
declared that the government would utilize the services of the media to
start a vilification campaign to show how cruel and bad the Maoists are.  That
is why they have picked up Mahato and through him are trying to tie the link
between the urban intellectuals and the Maoists. In this way they have
started a sinister campaign not only to demean the Lalgarh struggle but also
to force the intellectuals to dissociate themselves from the people's
movement in Lalgarh by constant threats of arrests and other forms of
intimidation.



The CRPP strongly denounces such despicable attempts launched against the
Lalagarh people and the urban intellectuals and calls upon the people both
in India and abroad to raise their voice against such attempts and put
pressure on the government to release Chhatradhar Mahato and all others
prisoners from Lalagarh.



In Solidarity,



Gurusharan Singh                      Amit Bhattacharyya
SAR Geelani

President                                     Secretary General
Working President



Rona Wilson

Secretary Public Relations