Author: Aloke Banerjee
Publication: The Times of India
Date: December 9, 2001
Two women in their early 2081 Deepa
Sarkar and Kakoli Mandi, are languishing in jail for the last five months
for daring to carry a pamphlet calling upon former U.S. president Bill
Clinton to 'go back'. Both the women were arrested in July this year in
Midnapore. They were charged with sedition by the police. When the court
did grant them bail, they were re-arrested and put back in prison.
Human rights organisations have
now decided to highlight their plight. They claim that there is no ground
to charge the women with sedition and that they should, if at all deemed
necessary, have been detained by the police and released after Mr Clinton
left the state or the country. But, ironically, the women were arrested
more than four months after Mr Clinton had come and gone. That the police
were able to act in such high-handed manner, raises questions about the
urgency for Prevention of Organised Crime Act (Poca) and the very real
possibility of misusing Poca by them.
Absence of a law, the organisations
point out, has not prevented the West Bengal government from putting nearly
a 1,000 political activists in prison. All of them have been arrested under
existing laws. As many as 686 of these activists are members of the Kamtapur
People's Party which is demanding a separate state in north Bengal. The
rest are activists of various Naxalite factions, according to reports compiled
by the Association for Protection of Democratic Rights.
Ironically, the Left Front, including
the CPM, too, had condemned Mr Clinton and had raised similar slogans during
the former U.S. president's visit in March last year. Both the women arrested
at Salboni were Naxalites connected with the People's War Group, claim
sources in the government.
The CPM, which is strongly opposed
to Poto passed by the BJP-led government at the Centre, also chose to ignore
the arrest of 77-year-old Bidhubhusan Mahato from Salboni around the same
time. His crime was more serious: he was carrying a copy of the Communist
Manifesto- the Bible of the CPM.
