Skip to main content

Legal notice to CM Rupani, DGP: Why are Gujarat farmers being 'illegally' detained?

 
Taking strong exception to the Gujarat government’s alleged preventive detentions of a large number of farmer leaders this week in order to stop them from holding any protests in support of the Bharat bandh on December 8, a legal notice served on chief minister Vijay Rupani, the home minister, the chief secretary, the director general of police, and other senior police officials has sought know under which law these “illegal” actions were being carried out.
Served through senior Gujarat High Court (HC) advocate Anand Yagnik by Gujarat Khedut Samaj leaders Jayesh Patel, Dahyabhai Gajera, Arun Mehta and Purshottam Parmar, and Gujarat Kisan Congress leaders Palbhai Ambaliya, Chetan Gadhiya and Girdharbhai Vaghela, and others, the legal notice said the detentions and house arrests were made “without FIR” and were “unconstitutional”, wondering why they should not approach HC and Supreme Court for stopping such action.
The legal notice said, “Between 9:00 pm of December 7 to 10:00 am of December 8, Jayesh Patel, Ramesh Patel, Dahyabhai Gajera, Arun Mehta, Pal Ambaliya, Girdharbhai Vaghela, Pravin Patodiya and Chetan Gadhiya were “preventively detained, arrested or put in house arrest” up to 6 pm on December 8 by the state police.
It said, starting on December 7, the cops started visiting houses and offices of these leaders and remained in the premises of the house or office “in spite of protest against such entry, encroachment and trespass”, insisting, this is against the right to privacy and basic human and constitutional rights and principles of civil liberties and personal liberty, as “guaranteed” under the Constitution.
This was done, said the legal notice, despite the fact that “not a single farmer leader and their associates violated Section 144 of Criminal Procedure Code warranting arrest or detention”. The farmers leaders were only verbally told that the detention or arrest was “in accordance with the Disaster Management Act, 2005 and the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897 and Gujarat Police Act, 1951.”
“This means that the elected and unelected executives in charge of law and order sitting at Gandhinagar or elsewhere, in a comprehensive, concerted and collective manner do take illegal and unconstitutional decisions and entire police department is told to implement the same”, the legal notice alleged.
Notice calls police action unconstitutional, accuses Gujarat BJP rulers of misusing state machinery to thwart farmers' right to dissent
Giving more details, the legal notice said, on December 10, cops from the local police station visited the office Jayesh Patel in Surat, asking him whether he was going to Gandhinagar on December 11 and then to Delhi on December 12. Again, on December 11, when he was attending a family function at home, cops were “hovering around his house in order to prevent him for leaving his house and Surat City.”
Pointing towards similar action in Surat against other leaders, the legal notice said, farmer leader Parimal Patel “was made to sit in Palsana police station for the whole day on December 11”, adding, cops “forcibly” entered the house of Ramesh Patel on December 9 night and was “rigorously and vigorously interrogated” him, wanting to know if he and other activists were leaving for Delhi.
Then, farmer leaders Dahyabhai Gajera, was forcibly confined in his house at village Upleta, district Rajkot; Chetan Gadhiya of village Pithadiya, district Rajkot, and Girdharbhai Vaghela of village Bhanvad, district Devbhoomi Dwarka, were “detained either in their house in office arrest”, the legal notice said.
Calling police actions “illegal and unconstitutional”, and accusing the BJP government of “misusing its state machinery to thwart attempt on the part of farmers of Gujarat to exercise their right to dissent, right to protest, right of movement in any part of India and freedom of expression”, the legal notice asked the Gujarat authorities not to prevent farmers and farmer leaders from going to Delhi to participate in the ongoing protests.
It also asked the authorities to immediately direct police officials across the state not to enter into the house or office of farmer leaders, not to stand or stay in the premises of their house or office in order to prevent them from leaving for Delhi.

Comments

TRENDING

Patriot, Link: How Soviet imbroglio post-1968 crucially influenced alternative media platforms

Adatata Narayanan, Aruna Asaf Ali Alternative media, as we know it today in the age of information and communication technology (ICT), didn't exist in the form it does today during or around the time I joined formal journalism at Link Newsweekly as a sub-editor in January 1979. However, Link, and its sister publication Patriot, a daily—both published from Delhi—were known to have provided what could be called an alternative media platform at a time when major Delhi-based dailies were controlled by media barons.

Morari Bapu echoes misleading figures to support the BJP's anti-conversion agenda

A senior Gujarat activist phoned me today to inform me that the well-known storyteller on Lord Ram, Morari Bapu, has made an "unsubstantiated" and "preposterous" statement in Songadh town, located in the tribal-dominated Tapi district. He claimed that while the Gujarat government wants the Bhagavad Gita to be taught in schools, the "problem is" that 75% of government teachers "are Christians who do not let this happen" and are “involved in religious conversions.”

60 crore in Mahakumbh? It's all hype with an eye on UP polls, asserts keen BJP supporter in Amit Shah's constituency

As the Mahakumbh drew to a close, during my daily walk, I met a veteran BJP supporter—a neighbor with whom we would often share dinner in a group. An amicable person, the first thing he asked me, as he was about to take the lift to his flat, was, "How many people do you think must have participated in the holy dip?" He then stopped by to talk—which we did for a full half-hour, cutting into my walk time.

Breaking news? Top Hindu builder ties up with Muslim investor for a huge minority housing society in Ahmedabad

There is a flutter in Ahmedabad's Vejalpur area, derogatorily referred to as the "border" because, on its eastern side, there is a sprawling minority area called Juhapura, where around five lakh Muslims live. The segregation is so stark that virtually no Muslim lives in Vejalpur, populated by around four lakh Hindus, and no Hindu lives in Juhapura.

An untold story? Still elusive: Gujarati language studies on social history of Gujarat's caste and class evolution

This is a follow-up to my earlier blog , where I mentioned that veteran scholar Prof. Ghanshyam Shah has just completed a book for publication on a topic no academic seems to have dealt with—caste and class relations in Gujarat’s social history. He forwarded me a chapter of the book, published as an "Economic & Political Weekly" article last year, which deals with the 2015 Patidar agitation in the context of how this now-powerful caste originated in the Middle Ages and how it has evolved in the post-independence era.

Caste, class, and Patidar agitation: Veteran academic 'unearths' Gujarat’s social history

Recently, I was talking with a veteran Gujarat-based academic who is the author of several books, including "Social Movements in India: A Review of Literature", "Untouchability in Rural India", "Public Health and Urban Development: The Study of Surat Plague", and "Dalit Identity and Politics", apart from many erudite articles and papers in research and popular journals.

Justifying social divisions? 'Dogs too have caste system like we humans, it's natural'

I have never had any pets, nor am I very comfortable with them. Frankly, I don't know how to play with a pet dog. I just sit quietly whenever I visit someone and see their pet dog trying to lick my feet. While I am told not to worry, I still choose to be a little careful, avoiding touching the pet.

New York-based digital company traces Modi's meteoric rise to global Hindutva ecosystem over several decades

A recent document, released by the Polis Project Inc.—a New York-based digital magazine and hybrid research and journalism organization—even as seeking to highlight the alleged rise of authoritarianism in India, has sought to trace Prime Minister Narendra Modi's meteoric rise since 2014 to the ever-expanding global Hindutva ecosystem over the last several decades.

A conman, a demolition man: How 'prominent' scribes are defending Pritish Nandy

How to defend Pritish Nandy? That’s the big question some of his so-called fans seem to ponder, especially amidst sharp criticism of his alleged insensitivity during his journalistic career. One such incident involved the theft and publication of the birth certificate of Masaba Gupta, daughter of actor Neena Gupta, in the Illustrated Weekly of India, which Nandy was editing at the time. He reportedly did this to uncover the identity of Masaba’s father.