[Reader-list] (no subject)

[Asit Das]

India Resists<http://www.indiaresists.com/justice-for-soni-sori-lingaram-kodopi-demanded/>Justice
for Soni Sori & Lingaram Kodopi
Demanded<http://www.indiaresists.com/justice-for-soni-sori-lingaram-kodopi-demanded/>
August 7, 2013

New Delhi (Press Release), 7th August[image: Soni
Sori]<http://www.indiaresists.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Soni-Sori.jpg>ing
the denial of interim bail to Soni Sori for performing the last rites for
her husband Anil Putane who died last week, various organizations in Delhi
issued a call for unconditional release of adivasi activists, Soni Sori and
Lingaram Kodopi. “It is beyond belief that a judiciary could be so
insensitive to deny even the basic humanitarian ground of bail for a few
days to Soni Sori, to allow her to make arrangements for her three young
children after the death of their father,” said Kalpana Mehta, convener of
Women against Sexual Violence and State Repression.

Runu Charkraborty questioned this saying why Soni Sori was not given the
opportunity to resettle her children and attend to the last rites of her
husband when this favour is granted to many other convicts.

Soni Sori, an adivasi school teacher and her nephew, the journalist
Lingaram Kodopi have both been in jail for over a year and a half now,
awaiting trial for allegedly acting as conduits for the Essar company to
give money to the Naxalites.  It must be remembered that the Essar company
official, DVCS Verma and the Essar contractor, BK Lala, who allegedly made
the money available to the Naxals and have in past dealt directly with them
according to the police complaint, are out on bail, but the Chhattisgarh
High Court has denied bail on similar grounds to Linga Kodopi and Soni
Sori.  “If the police complaint in the Essar case is to be believed, then
there is damning evidence of money being transferred from the Essar company
to the Naxalites over a period of time, although the role of Soni and Linga
is quite nebulous.  But the irony is that neither the Naxalites nor the
Essar company individuals are currently in jail – only Linga and Soni, the
so-called middlemen who neither gave the money, nor received this illegal
transaction –are presently in jail,” said Amiy Shukla, Supreme Court
advocate for Soni Sori. “This clearly shows the differing scales of justice
for the adivasis and non-adivasis.”

Lingaram Kodopi, one of the few adivasi journalists from the
conflict-affected part of Chhattisgarh had earned the ire of the local
police in 2009 when he refused to become a Special Police Officer for
them.  His aunt, Soni Sori, further incurred their wrath for being
outspoken in her defence of Linga, and against other human rights
violations in the on-going conflict.  While Linga fled to Delhi to escape
police harassment, Soni Sori stuck it out in war-torn Dantewada and became
the special target of police atrocities.  Not only did the Chhattisgarh
police lodge six criminal cases against Soni Sori in 2010, they even
arrested her husband Anil Futane in July 2010, seized his vehicle which was
a source of income for the family, and foisted four different criminal
cases against him.  Soni and Linga were later arrested in 2011 for the
Essar case, even after a sting operation conducted by the investigative
magazine Tehelka proved that the police had completely fabricated this case
against Linga and Soni.

After spending almost three years in prison, Anil Futane suffered a massive
paralytic stroke in April this year, just days before he was finally
acquitted in the last of these cases on May 1st.  Although Anil had no
history of any illness before his imprisonment, this stroke left him
completely bed-ridden and immobile.  Unable to bear the cost of his
treatment after he was released from jail, his family decided to bring him
home from the government hospital in Raipur and his eldest daugther, all of
13 years old, was pulled out of school to tend to him in his sickness.  He
passed away on August 1st.  The district court in Dantewada was moved
immediately by Soni’s family seeking an interim bail for her on
humanitarian grounds to enable her to attend the last rites of her husband
and to be with her three young children in this traumatic period, but it
was refused on grounds of the seriousness of charges against her.

It should be remembered that In addition to the Essar case, the
Chhattisgarh police had also implicated Soni Sori in six other Naxalite
cases and Linga Kodopi in one other Naxalite case.  Soni Sori has since
been acquitted in 5 of these cases, and has been granted bail in the
sixth.  Linga Kodopi has also been acquitted in the other case. “The
remaining Essar case against them is also very weak,” explains Himanshu
Kumar, a social activist from Dantewada, “but the trial will take years to
get over.  Meanwhile, the Chhattisgarh High Court has denied them bail.
This only leaves the Supreme Court to undo this injustice, grant them bail
and bring a modicum of justice to this family.”

The tragic part is that while all of them, Anil Futane, Soni Sori, and
Linga Kodopi are innocent of the crimes they are charged with– the time it
takes for them to prove their innocence before our courts is enough to
reduce a perfectly happy and healthy family to a state of destitution and
beggary. “Soni’s mother first passed away due to the shock of her
daughter’s imprisonment, her father is also seriously ill, her husband who
was imprisoned on her account is now dead, and her three young children are
left to fend for themselves, while her own health condition is also quite
precarious,” adds Himanshu Kumar. In addition to her continuing illness
after facing severe torture and sexual violence in jail, it is now learned
that Soni Sori is also suffering from severe anemia in jail.  She had to be
given emergency blood transfusions in May as her hemoglobin levels dropped
precariously to 5.4 gms.

“Anil Futane, Soni Sori and Linga Kodopi are just three of the many
innocent persons jailed and put away for years in the conflict torn parts
of Central India,” says Sanjeev Kumar of the Delhi Solidarity Group. “In
addition to the release of Linga and Soni, we also demand a systematic
review of the undertrials languishing in these overcrowded jails by an
independent committee, and the immediate release of those found to be
falsely implicated.”

“All our demands are falling on deaf ears. A large number of women’s
organizations have asked for action against Ankit Garg who oversaw torture
of Soni Sori in police custody. She was subjected to continual harrasment
in jail and for every step from physical examination for injuries from
torture to medical care Supreme Court had to intervene. But even now
Chhattisgarh government continues to deprive her of basic human dignity and
wants to take her around in shackles whether to the hospital or to her
husband’s funeral. All this after she has been exonerated in all cases
where a verdict has come through” said Savita Sharma of Saheli.

Issued by: *Delhi Solidarity Group, Human Rights Law Network, Khalra Centre
for Human Rights Defenders, PUDR , Saheli, Sawajwadi Jan Parishad, Women
against Sexual Violence and State Repression*