Days after Dalit writer Durai Guna and his friend Bhoopathy Karthikeyan were arrested by the police, the Human Rights Defenders Alert – India has urged the National Human Rights Commission to investigate the case contending it was a case of “arbitrary” arrest based on “false and fabricated” charges.
In a press release, HRDA-India’s National Secretary Henri Tiphagne said the police had filed “false complaints to take a revenge on the human rights work of the activists”. He recalled their work on the issues of illicit liquor and inter-caste marriages.
The forum also urged the NHRC to order an independent, transparent and effective investigation by an officer in the ranks of Deputy Inspector General of Police into the incident.
“We have also appealed to the National Human Rights Commission to order to initiate contempt proceedings and departmental inquiry against the Judicial Magistrate, Aalangudi, for encouraging a false compliant and the Medical Officer in-charge of Aalangudi Government Hospital,” Mr. Tiphagne said.
Mr. Guna was in the news last year when he and his family were subjected to social boycott by caste Hindus after he penned a novel highlighting the plight of a Dalit couple. Mr. Karthikeyan has been active in issues concerning inter-caste marriages. Both were members of Periyar Ambedkar Cultural Centre and were actively protesting against illicit liquor in their neighbourhood, Mr. Tiphagne claimed.
Police claimed that the two were arrested based on a complaint of Sivanandham that they had injured him, but he denied having made any such complaint and alleged that the police had obtained his signature in a blank paper.
Mr. Sivanandham said he was being used as a tool by the police to settle scores with the two human rights activists.
It is a case of arbitrary arrest based on false and fabricated charges, say activists
