Civil Liberties Committee Telangana state condemns illegal arrest of Sushant Panigrahy..............
.(From Whatsup of Deba Ranjan,GASS, Odisha).......
The arrest of Sushanta Panigrahi of Khaprakhol block of Balangir district of Odisha is a pre-planned effort of local police and the villagers.
The villagers, mostly rich, were creating problems for Satya Mahananda, a Dalit landless person, whenever he had tried to construct a house on government allotted land. Sushanta stood with Satya Mahananda and extended all help to him for which he is arrested.
Sushanta, as a human rights activist, was very much in the process of rescuing brick kiln workers of their own district, Balangir, working in various parts of Telangana and in other states.
He was collecting information from the family members of those ‘bonded’ workers and was coordinating with the human rights organizations like CLC (Telangana), GASS (Odisha) and with various labor officials of both the governments.
Relying on his information CLC (Telangana) and various communist party activists were reaching to the brick industry site and were rescuing the workers with help of local administration. They were sending the workers to Balangir by train.
He has already filed a number of cases before NHRC to take up such cases. To his credit, he might have brought back 1000 or more migrant workers in the two years.
Sushanta’s involvement had invited the wrath of labor contractors, brick owners and others who were enjoying the flesh and sweat of the poor workers.
Now he is facing charges of wrongful restraint (section 341 of IPC), obscene acts and scenes (294), voluntarily causing hurt (323), criminal intimidation (506) and woman with intent to outrage her modesty (354) etc. It is shocking that the FIR has not been filed by the woman but by another person and the police have acted on such complaint. However, this thing will come at the time of trial.
Now Sushanta has been in Patanagarh jail since 31 March 2021. I request to condemn such a move of the police and take steps to help Sushanta in his fight for justice.
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