Swaraj India Party president Yogendra Yadav was arrested on Saturday in Tiruvannamalai, where he had gone with a group of activists to speak to farmers about the eight-lane Salem-Chennai corridor project. Late in the evening, he and 30 other activists were released.
In the morning, he was allegedly manhandled by the police when he was on his way to a private meeting with farmers. The police detained him at a wedding hall for the rest of the day.
Tiruvannamalai Superintendent of Police Sibi Chakravarthi reportedly tried to convince him to go back, but Prof. Yadav refused, saying he would meet farmers at their homes as planned.
Prof. Yadav, who was allegedly served a ‘backdated, post facto police order’ prohibiting meetings, told The Hindu over phone: “Today, I had first-hand experience of the police state in Tamil Nadu.” A team of farmer leaders along with Prof. Yadav was on a fact-finding mission at the invitation of the Movement Against the 8-lane Project. Prof. Yadav said he was manhandled and pushed into a van. This happened shortly after he spoke to the District Collector who assured him that “he had his freedom and the police could not stop him.”
The trip was going well till Mr. Yadav, and other activists entered Tiruvannamalai district limits.
They had just come from Athipady in Krishnagiri, and had met a farmer in his house in Tiruvannamalai. As they were leaving, the team members, including Mr. Yadav, were allegedly manhandled and bundled into a van by the police.
Speaking to The Hindu over the phone from the wedding hall where he was detained, Prof. Yadav said: “There were five policemen videographing and so I asked farmer Arul Arumugam with me to videograph the proceedings. The police grabbed him and his phone, and to protect him, I hugged him. The police dragged us both, snatched my phone and shoved us into the police vehicle.”
“All this happened within 5 minutes of my getting off my phone with the District Collector,” saïd Prof. Yadav. “I called up Collector Kandasamy and said that no final order was issued as of now, and he agreed no order was issued. I asked, ‘How do they then forcibly enter lands?’ and he said no such thing was happening and that they were talking only to farmers who cooperated.”
‘No brutality’
“I told him I was sitting with a farmer, and the police had forcibly entered his house. But he denied there was any police brutality and claimed that outsiders were creating a law and order issue,” Prof. Yadav said, adding that he had told him that he was an outsider, interacting with affected farmers, and constitutionally, he had the right to hold meetings with farmers on their property. “The Collector said, you have your freedom and police can’t stop you.”
However, within 5 minutes, they were bundled into a van that was to take them to the police station. “However, soon they realised who we were, and the vehicle was diverted to a wedding hall.”
According to Prof. Yadav, District Superintendent of Police Sibi Chakravathi arrived and said that they had information that ‘over a 100 farmers’ were meeting with him. “If I were to meet with 100 farmers on their own property, how is it illegal?” he asked.
“I have come to meet the farmers. I will not leave without meeting them,” he had said earlier in the day. Later, they were served a police order, purportedly issued on September 1, invoking Section 30(2) of the Police Act, 1861, preventing any public meeting and assembly in Chengam police subdivision of Tiruvannamalai.
Dubbing it an “illegal order”, Prof. Yadav refused to be detained under it. “This notice was not received by a political party or released to the media, and appeared as an after-thought, backdated and prepared post facto, and is therefore illegal,” he said.
Later in the day, they were released from detention and Prof. Yadav and his group left for Nanmiyaenthal, where after tailing them for over 8 km., police arrested them in the evening. Over 45 farmers that they had met and were scheduled to meet were also detained, as was a pregnant woman, who was visiting relatives. Prof. Yadav and 30 others were released past 9.30 p.m. The Swaraj India Party president stood his ground on meeting farmers in their homes.
