Arun Ferreira, a civil rights activist, spent four and a half years inside Maharashtra’s prisons because the police believed that he was a Maoist. He speaks of life inside prisons, of hierarchies behind bars and the ubiquity of torture in police custody.
TEXT AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY JAVED IQBAL
Thirty-year-old Arun Ferreira hails from a middle-class Catholic family in…
Today, 23rd March, day of hanging of Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukdev were hanged in jail by the British, is being observed by a day-long hunger strike by over 200 `political prisoners' in various jails in Maharashtra, including the Angela Sontakkey and four women prisoners in Byculla women's jail and Sidharth Bhosale and Deepak Dengle of…
Arun ferreira , who was inside prison for more than four years talks about his experience of torture in the police custody and police lock ups in . He speaks our that there is difference of torture in police custody which is much harsher than when one is in prison, but levels might be different , degree might be different but torture is omnipresent , its high time…
Arun Ferriera who spent four years in prison shares his experinces of torture and struggle for human rights inside prison. He was speaking at the Human Rights Education Seminar, at St Pius College, organised by the South Asian Human righst education centre. He also talks how he was not allowed to get in Constitution of India, to read
By K. P. Sasi
28 February, 2012
Countercurrents.org
I do not know whether we won the freedom of this subcontinent called India because of Gandhi or Ambedkar. While thousands of people worked selflessly for the freedom that you and I enjoy today, and often take it for granted, without realising that this freedom is fast eroding under our own feet, there were certainly some individuals who shaped our present spaces due to some of their selfless actions of their past.
In today's times when much of media is sold out to corporates, the only voices that show the truth of malpractices of various mining giants are a few activists and documentary filmmakers. Vedanta's strategy to organize a film competition on their 'community initiatives' is such a fool proof masking of their real face. By organizing such a film competition and sponsoring 114 students from top media and film schools in the country including…
03/02/2012-Soni Sori's letter from Prison, she asks questions to all the citizens of India, Please answer her
This if for all social workers intellectuals, NGOs, human rights organisations, women’s commission and citizens of India, an abused and helpless tribal woman, is asking you to answer her why she is being brutally tortured and she wants to know--
PTI
Mumbai resident Arun Thomas Ferreira, who spent four years in jail on charges of being a Maoist, today said he was innocent and alleged torture atthe hands of police while in prison.
Blasting the Maharashtra government, he said the administration has come out with a new idea of re-arresting “political prisoners” to suppress their ideology.
Ferreira is currently on bail in a case filed by the Gadchiroli district police last year. He walked out of Nagpur Central Jail in September 2011 after being acquitted by a Nagpur Court in 10 criminal cases lodged against him in 2007.
However, his freedom was shortlived. “I was re-arrested from the gates of the jail and two more cases were slapped against me,” Ferreira claimed.
“After another three-month battle and following an outcry against the state’s highhandedness, I was finally set free on January 4, 2012.”
Of the two new cases against him, he was acquitted in one while bail was granted in the other, he said.
“I had to spend more than four-and-a half years of my life fighting to prove my innocence. I was a political prisoner and a Leftist. And like me there were 27 other political prisoners languishing in the Nagpur jail.”
It has become a regular practice for the police to re-arrest political prisoners in some case of other, he said.
Recalling his experience in prison, Ferreira said, “I was tortured and made to undergo narco-analysis not once but two times. The courts, however, did not believe the police story and I was acquitted in 10 cases.”
Jan 11, 2012-A smiling Arun Ferreira faced a barrage of questions on Wednesday here as he addressed his first press conference since his release from Nagpur Central Jail on January 4. In May 2007, Ferreira was arrested and accused of being part of a Maoist plot to blow up BR Ambedkar’s memorial in Nagpur.
The press conference was called by Committee for the Protection of Democratic Rights and the fiery activist in Ferreira was much in evidence. He spoke largely about his jail term and how he plans to actively campaign for activist Sudhir Dhawale, resident of Mumbai and publisher of Vidrohi, who was arrested in 2011 near Nagpur.
Ferreira largely spoke of the “torture he faced and how he was forced to undergo two rounds of narco-analysis despite protests. “The hierarchies that remain in society exist in jail also,” he said referring to the 2G scam trial. “It’s a fallacy that every inmate is equal in jail because caste, class and money matter as much in prisons as they matter outside, and treatment meted out to each person is specific to that.”
Ferreira, who has come under the glare for being a Naxal sympathiser, stands firm on his beliefs. The activist said that he supported all people’s movements and it was up to the state to “end the cycle of violence”. “To end violence, the state must take the first step just as an elder sibling should take responsibility.”
“It’s good that because of me, plight of others facing similar situations has been highlighted,” said Ferreira adding that his case was in the forefront of media attention as he was from Mumbai, but there were “many other nameless faces that belonged to rural areas and whose voices were never heard”.
Ferreira is still deciding his future plans as he spends time at home with his family. But he is determined to raise awareness and fight for people like him who represent the voice of dissent but are labelled Naxal sympathisers and have been arrested. Ferreira has filed a petition before the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court challenging his re-arrest and the slapping of ‘false’ cases. His petition mentions cases of 27 undertrials who “were abducted from prisons immediately after release and rearrested by Gadchiroli police between July and December 2011”.
Sunaina Kumar is a Senior Correspondent with Tehelka.com
sunaina@tehelka.com
