Aji Krishnan, founder-secretary of the controversial non-governmental organisation named Highrange Rural Development Society (HRDS), was arrested in connection with a tribal land grab case in Attappady on Monday night.
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A court at Mannarkkad remanded him in police custody until Wednesday. The court denied him bail considering the prosecution’s argument that there were similar complaints against Aji Krishnan and several co-accused were to be nabbed.
Police detained Aji Krishnan within hours after he returned from abroad and landed at Attappady on Monday. His arrest was recorded late at night in connection with a complaint that Raman, a tribesman from Vattilakki hamlet at Sholayur panchayat in Attappady, had filed about a year ago. Charges of tribal land grabbing, burning tribal huts, and humiliating by calling caste names, were slapped against Aji Krishnan.
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Police were accused of not acting so far against the HRDS and its officials in spite of several complaints of encroachment on tribal land and atrocities against tribespeople filed since August last year. One of the cases was of the HRDS taking on lease 56 acre at Vattilakki from former bureaucrat R. Ramachandran Nair over a year ago that was allegedly tribal land. A section of tribespeople built huts on that land, arguing that the land belonged to them. The huts were then burnt and the tribespeople manhandled by a group of men. The police, however, did not register a case.
They also allegedly acted against a tribal leader at the behest of the HRDS officials. No action had been taken against the HRDS even after the State Human Rights Commission visited Attappady and found that there had been excesses against the tribespeople.
Aji Krishnan, in his bail application on Tuesday, said that his arrest was in vengeance because he had given shelter to Swapna Suresh, one of the key accused in the high-profile diplomatic channel gold smuggling case. Swapna, while working for the HRDS, had stirred a hornet’s nest by making a confidential confession before a magistrate, directly linking Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, his family and some top bureaucrats and politicians with the gold smuggling case.
The HRDS sacked Swapna last week after its officials were persistently harassed by different arms of the State police. It also said that false charges were slapped against Aji Krishnan on the basis of a directive from Chief Minister’s office.