Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders Annual Report 2004 - India

Physical attack on human rights activists⁶⁹

Mr. Kailash Satyarthi, chairman of the "Save the Childhood Movement" (Bachpan Nachao Andolan), was attacked, threatened and sued in his attempt to rescue children enslaved and victim of sexual abuse in the "Great Roman Circus" in Gonda district, Uttar Pradesh.

On 15 June 2004, Mr. Satyarthi, acting on the complaints of eleven parents and accompanied by four of them, conducted a peaceful raid of the circus to rescue the children enslaved there. Since the raid was to be conducted in co-operation with the Sub-divisional Magistrate, the latter accompanied Satyarthi and the group of activists to the circus. Yet, as soon as the group arrived, the Magistrate turned against them in conspiracy with the circus administration, who launched an attack on Mr. Satyarthi and the other activists with knives, iron rods and guns. A circus manager threatened to shoot Mr. Satyarthi, if he tried to take any children away, and Mr. Satyarthi later suffered head injuries and a fractured leg. The Magistrate threatened the activists, saying that if they took up the cause, they had to "get ready for a bashing as well".

On 18 June 2004, Mr. Satyarthi began a hunger strike outside the Uttar Pradesh State Legislative Assembly in Lucknow, demanding the immediate release of the children trapped in the circus, as well as an inquiry into the conditions of children working in all circuses throughout India. Approximately 25 supporters joined in the strike, which ended when the police forcibly admitted Mr. Satyarthi to the hospital on 22 June 2004.

Although charges were filed against Mr. Satyarthi for "illegal activity", no attempt to investigate the attack and threats toward the activists was made by the authorities, and no charges were filed against them, not even by the Magistrate. Some of the circus staff were charged with sexual abuse, but only two of them were arrested.

Violent dispersal of a peaceful meeting⁷⁰

On 21 August 2004, activists of the Jangipara branch of the Association for the Protection of Democratic Rights (APDR), based in West Bengal, organised a peaceful street meeting against state-repression in Hooghly, greater Kolkota. The local APDR members were joined for the occasion by Mr. Sujato Bhadra, APDR general secretary, Mr. Amitadyuti Kumar, APDR vice-president, Prof. Sanjib Acharya, secretary of APDR Hooghly district committee, Mr. Gautam Munshi, treasurer of the Hooghly district committee, and secretariat members Messrs. Bapi Dasgupta, Raghunath Chakraborty, Shankar Nandy, Sukumar Tiwari and Tushar Chakraborty.

As APDR members assembled at the Jangipara bus stand, they were attacked by a group of 50 to 60 members of the Communist Party of India – Marxist (CPIM), who attacked the gathering by kicking and beating the members with their fists and poles, and verbally abusing them. The victims of the attack, among which were Messrs. Amitadyuti Kumar and Gautam Munshi, were later admitted to Walsh Hospital, Srirampur.

Although police officers were posted nearby the place of the attack, and the victims rushed to the police station, no police officers came to stop the violence or arrest the perpetrators. After breaking up the APDR meeting, the attacking group then began its own meeting, labelling APDR members as part of an opposition party plot.

On 21 September 2004, the National Human Rights Commission of India (NHRC) requested the Chief Secretary of the government of West Bengal to submit "requisite information/report" within four weeks from the date of receipt of the notice (case number 553/25/20042005/UC).

As of November 2004, no action had been taken against the police officers.

Arbitrary arrests, subsequent releases and deliberate disruption of human rights activities⁷¹

On 11 October 2004, several members of the People's Watch-Tamil Nadu (PW-TN), an NGO that promotes human rights through monitoring, intervention and education, and of the Federation of Consumer Organisations Tamil Nadu & Pondicherry (FEDCOT), two organisations belonging to the National Core Group on NGOs of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), gathered for a training session to prepare the Campaign Against Torture-Tamil Nadu (CAT-TN) at the Cuddalore (Tamil Nadu) town hall. Later on the same day, they were going to organise a press conference on human rights violations committed by Mr. Prem Kumar, police superintendent in Cuddalore district, including sexual harassment of women, arbitrary detentions, intimidation and coercion.

When the training session was about to start, a group of policemen headed by deputy superintendent of police Payas Ferozkhan Abdullah, forced their way into the training hall and interrupted the programme, under the alleged reason that a press briefing was not allowed. When the defenders protested, the police warned them that they would be arrested. When Mr. Henri Tiphagne, the executive director of PW-TN, demanded a warrant, the policemen headed by superintendent Payas Ferozkhan demonstrated excessive physical force on him and carried him off to the town hall police station.

Thirteen other defenders, among whom Mr. Nizamudeen, State secretary general of the National Core Group on NGOs, and Mr. Murugappan, regional monitoring associate at PW-TN, along with two bystanders, were also arrested and taken to the Cuddalore police station.

All these persons were held for over seven hours on a provisional detention order, before being released on bail. Neither at the time of their arrest, nor during their detention were they informed of the legal grounds for their arrest. In a custody memo, the registered cause of arrest was that the campaigners had obstructed a computer class for women at the town hall, nothing more. Later on, People's Watch was officially notified that the defenders had been held for crime no.716/2004, under sections of the Criminal Amendment Act referring to rioting, assault or use of criminal force, disobedience to an order lawfully promulgated, and criminal intimidation, which contradictorily does not allow for release on bail.

On 11 October 2004, under national and international pressure, the NHRC registered the case and issued an order to the Director General of the police to conduct an investigation into the arrest of Mr. Tiphagne and his colleagues and provide a report on the facts within two weeks.

On 13 October 2004, PW-TN learned through the media that the State Human Rights Commission, Tamil Nadu (SHRC) had taken cognisance of the case suo moto. PW-TN addressed a letter to the SHRC's acting chairman requesting that the SHRC discontinue its enquiry, in application of section 36 of the Protection of Human Rights Act, and yield to the NHRC's prior motions on the case.⁷² Nonetheless, the Inspector General of the police, Mr. Jangrid, responsible for northern Tamil Nadu including the district of Cuddalore, initiated his own enquiry.

Mr. Tiphagne had previously played a key role in having Mr. Prem Kumar convicted for human rights violations, in particular in the case of army veteran Mr. Subedhar Nallakaman, a resident of Vadipatti who was beaten and tortured in 1982, along with his wife and his son, by Mr Kumar, the then sub-inspector at the Vadipatti police station.

Furthermore, the police had raided the premises of PW-TN at Madurai, on 5 November 2003.⁷³ Mr. Henri Tiphagne was at the time personally intimidated and threatened by senior police officials.

[Refworld note: This report as posted on the FIDH website (www.fidh.org) was in pdf format with country chapters run together by region. Footnote numbers have been retained here, so do not necessarily begin at 1.]

69. See Urgent Appeal IND 001/0704/OBS 053.

70. See Urgent Appeal IND 002/0804/OBS 066.

71. See Urgent Appeal IND 002/1103/OBS 061.1 and Annual Report 2003.

72. The founding articles of India's Human Rights Commissions specify that only one such body may take cognisance of a case; in this case, that power belongs to the NHRC, which was the first commission to have registered the case.

73. See Urgent Appeal IDN/002/1103/OBS 061 and Annual Report 2003.