The government would go in appeal against the ruling of a Single Bench of the Kerala High Court that ‘being a Maoist is no crime’ and that ‘the police cannot detain a person merely because he is a Maoist’.
Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala told The Hindu on Saturday that he had directed the Home Secretary to study the Single Bench verdict in detail and take steps to file an appeal against it. “We are very clear in our mind that the police must have sufficient powers to deal with Maoists,” Mr. Chennithala said.
The police, he said, could not but act given the existence of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. Maoists believed in violence and were indulging in violent acts in different parts of the country. The State government had to remain vigilant about such actions and take into custody persons who could resort to violence in pursuit of their ideology, he said.
Of current detentions
Mr. Chennithala said he was personally not against anyone keeping Maoist literature at their homes if it was part of an academic activity, but that could not be said about persons who were in some way connected with Maoist activity, including abetment in some form or the other. There was also the question whether the High Court’s ruling would affect the issues of detention currently being handled by the State police and the government, he pointed out.
The government had taken a lenient stand whenever genuine issues connected with preventive detention were brought to its notice. It had also tried to be lenient when bail applications were moved in courts on behalf of Maoist sympathisers who were taken into custody. But this could not be the norm in all cases. “As government, we will have to take a stern stand when law and order are in jeopardy,” Mr. Chennithala said.
The police could not but act given the existence of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, says Chennithala