Tortured, Jailed, Brutalised

The inhuman torture of Soni Sori by the Chhattisgarh Police can put any civilised society to shame
Sadiq Naqvi Delhi

Under the Raman Singh led BJP regime, one horror story after another unfolds in Chhattisgarh every day. The latest in line is the story of a school teacher, Soni Sori, branded as a Naxalite by the state government. Now shifted to Raipur jail, after the Supreme Court intervened, she was subjected to brutal torture by the state police even while her case is under the judicial eye.
On October 5, 2011, Soni Sori was arrested from Delhi in a joint operation by the Delhi Crime Branch and Chhattisgarh Police. They have been looking for her. They raided the house of leading civil society activist Kavita Srivastava, in Jaipur. A truck full of cops swooped down on her house saying they were looking for Sori. The list of charges against Sori include conniving with the Essar group to pay off the Maoists, beside other cases.

Sori rushed to Delhi, fearing for her life. She was hiding from the Chhattisgarh police. She was afraid that the cops will physically harm her. After her arrest, when she was produced in front of the Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate at the Saket district court in Delhi, she, along with her lawyers, requested the court to give her bail. She pleaded that she should not be sent back as she feared that the Chhattisgarh police will kill her.

The judge had categorically ordered that the police must take care of her safety in transit. "Why does the police want to kill me? Even in the protection money case (Note kaand), they fired on me on 11-9-2011. Only I know how I saved myself. After that a policeman tried to get me entangled in a false case by asking me to flee. I told these things even in the Saket court. I cried and cried and tried to tell (the court) that the police had tortured me, even showed my earlier wound, and said that I will not go back from Delhi, I will carry on my fight in Delhi's court. But even then, the court did not believe me and gave me to the Chhattisgarh police," Sori wrote in a letter addressed to the Supreme Court.

The Chhattisgarh Police, armed with a transit remand of four days, took her to Dantewada. She was flown out of Delhi the same evening. She was then produced in front of a magistrate who ordered that she be put under judicial custody and also said that she be taken for a medical examination before she is taken into custody. The judge ordered the police to produce her on October 10. On October 10, she was taken to the district hospital. Why? The police claimed she slipped in the bathroom.
A video circulating on Youtube painted a rather gory picture. It showed her writhing in pain in the x-ray room. The local doctors in Jagdalpur and Raipur, still did not find any serious injury. "They were acting under police pressure," says Gandhian Himanshu Kumar, whose Vanvasi Chetna Ashram in Dantewada was bulldozed by the authorities. Sori, who has worked for the tribals with Himanshu, calls him 'Guruji'.

The police and the state government still remained in a state of denial. Activists, aware of the Raman Singh regime's nasty methods, approached the Supreme Court. It was then that the court, taking notice of the plea, ordered an independent medical examination in Kolkata.

The findings of the medical report can put any civilised society to shame. The findings by the NRS Medical College reportedly says that two stones had been inserted in her vagina and one in her rectum, and that she has annular tears in her spine. "We will take up this matter with the president of India, chairperson of the Congress, and leader of the opposition in Loksabha, who are all women. Let them see what is happening with women in their country," said Sylvie, an activist with the Narmada Bachao Andolan.

In a recent letter, Sori states that she was pulled out of her cell at the Jagdalpur Police Station during the "midnight of 8th/9th October on the orders of SP Ankit Garg, stripped and given electric shocks". She woke up the next morning with acute pain all over her body, head and spine. That she could not even get down from the vehicle and be presented in front of the magistrate is solid evidence of the injuries inflicted upon her the previous night. Even the report by the Dantewada hospital shows that she had severe contusions on her spine.

Sori has been long claiming that she has got nothing to do with Maoists. Indeed, she is a victim of Maoist violence. "If I was a supporter of Naxalites, then why could I not protect my father's house and property from being looted by the Naxalites? When the Naxalites shot my father in the leg, and who, today, is not in a condition to walk, then why could I not save my father from this fate? This truth is well known to the police and to the court, but they have still blindfolded themselves. My father entered the court and gave testimony, but the court still ignored it," she wrote in the letter.

Even when the police was claiming that Sori is absconding, her friends maintain that she was teaching in her school in full public view. "This is a well concealed ploy of the police. They did not want to arrest her and were using the fabricated cases to pressurise her and force her nephew Lingaram Kodopi to shut up. Kodopi, a freelance journalist, was exposing the state government," claimed Himanshu.

Lingaram has also been arrested. He was well known among journalists, lawyers and activists in Delhi while he studied journalism here. He had then alleged that the Chhattisgarh police is trying to frame him.

Sori wrote in her letter to the apex court, "Naxalites use many different ways to cause incidents. When the police received news of some incident, why didn't they come to my Ashram School in Jabeli and enquire whether or not I was in the ashram on the day of the incident? Judge Sahib, I am in the middle of 100-150 children, serving my Ashram School Jabeli students night and day. I have always taught these children to speak the truth. My students will never tell a lie. Then, why did the police not question these students?"

In a letter to Himanshu, Sori talks of how even the magistrate sympathised with her plight. Sori wrote, "Madam started to say that I have asked the police and they say that you were always absconding. I said that if it were so, then they would have given information to your court earlier that that this woman is absconding. Then, Madam, why did you not take action earlier? You should have sent a notice from the court to my education department (my employers). Then Madam smiled and said, you are absolutely correct. I myself get confused when I think about your case. I am not able to understand all this. ...You are drawing salary from the state, and the police also did not inform this court that you are absconding."

Recently, when Raman Singh arrived in Delhi to attend a media conclave where he spoke on 'good governance', activists, mostly women, were beaten up, pushed and dragged at Chhattisgarh Sadan. The activists wanted to talk to him about Sori's torture. "His definition of good governance is confined to brutal repression of any democratic dissent," said Vani. "How can he not meet people on issues concerning the well being of people in his own state?"

The Supreme Court, acting on the plea of Sori, has ordered that the state government must reply to all the allegations by January 13, 2012 and that she be kept in Raipur jail instead of Jagdalpur jail.

Sori, activists feel, in custody of the same police which tortured her, might still not be safe. As she wrote to Himanshu earlier, "Guruji, please do something. I am deeply troubled by my condition. I am innocent, and yet I am in jail. And all the people who did this to me, they are all outside. It is better to die than go through all this."

The Peoples Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR) too issued a statement.

Peoples Union for Democratic Rights is distressed at the hiatus between the sharp observations of the Supreme Court judges and their timid operative orders and judgments. If there was any doubt over this it has been laid to rest by the recent orders of the apex court hearing the case of Soni Sori and the clarification offered by a bench of the Supreme Court in the much touted judgment on the issue of SPOs.

After her arrest in Delhi, Soni Sori had pleaded before three judges of the Saket District Court when her transit remand was being heard, that were she to be handed over to the Chhattisgarh police, she would definitely be tortured. Indeed she had pointed to the judge at the Saket district court that one member of the police team which had come to take her in their remand and escort her to Chhattisgarh had tortured her on a previous occasion. Her pleas fell on deaf ears.

When her complaint of torture including sexual violence inflicted on her was submitted before the Supreme Court, the judges chose not to intervene. And now when the medical check-up ordered by the court by a Kolkata hospital has established that stones were recovered from her private parts, the veracity of her charge stands corroborated. Instead of taking cognition of this and immediately moving her to safety of a jail outside Chhattisgarh, the apex court on 2nd December 2011 gave the state authorities 45 days to respond to the medical report and meanwhile merely shifted her to Raipur jail from Jagdalpur jail in the same state.

Thus the very same delinquent police force, its personnel and associated authorities have got permission to incarcerate her for an inordinately long period, a period sufficient for the state government to threaten, brow-beat and destroy Soni Sori before its prepares its response. It appears that custodial rape and torture of a woman, adivasi at that, does not enjoy any premium as there is greater concern for the prestige of the state authorities engaged in the valiant game of prosecuting a war against its own people in the tribal belt of India. The order of the Supreme Court has also risked Soni Sori’s safety further by shifting her to Raipur jail as her travel to the Dantewada court now entails a journey of 22 hours. It threatens her already frail health, puts her in prolonged police custody during transit and provides the government an easy alibi to deny her access to the court altogether.

In the SPO case the apex court bench watered down, if not trivialized, its original order issued on 5 July 2011 which had directed the Central government to desist from providing any funds for supporting directly or indirectly recruitment of SPOs and engaging them in counter-insurgency activities and had declared that the appointment of SPOs as part of regular police as unconstitutional. Thus the deployment of SPOs anywhere including in J&K, North East, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal became illegal. By agreeing to remove reference to central government and by confining the judgment to Chhattisgarh alone and by maintaining scrupulous silence over how the Chhattisgarh state got around the restriction by raising a new force, the Supreme Court restored everything it had declared to be unconstitutional and thereby trivialised its own judgment and observations.

The only rationale for the issuing of such orders is that once ‘national security’ is invoked, the Courts, even the apex Court, fall in line behind the Executive. The most recent order on the deployment of SPOs and that regarding Soni Sori’s custodial torture show the Supreme Court in poor light and even more regrettably show it to be sacrificing people’s fundamental rights at the altar of “national security”.

For those of us who perceive the judiciary, at least its higher levels, as a protector of people’s interests there is salutary message: our freedoms are at risk because people’s concerns receive a short shrift at the hands of the judiciary as and when the executive invokes national security. Thus, radical observations and timid, if not trivial, operative orders must be condemned.

Harish Dhawan, Paramjeet Singh
(Secretaries)

Source:http://www.hardnewsmedia.com/2011/12/4244