COMMITTEE FOR THE RELEASE OF POLITICAL PRISONERS
A REPORT ON
CONVENTION AGAINST DEATH PENALTY
organised by Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners
20 December 2011, India International Centre, New Delhi
Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners (CRPP) originally conceptualised this convention as an occasion to demand the release of Jitan Marandi and three others condemned to death as a part of its ongoing campaign for the abolition of death penalty and the unconditional release of all political prisoners. The convention was to form a committee for the release of Jitan Marandi comprising of progressive and democratic individuals and organisations. Following their acquittal by the Jharkhand High Court on 15 December 2011, the convention focussed primarily on raising the demand for abolishing judicial murder in the form of death penalty.
On 22 June 2011, Jitan Marandi a well known cultural activist from Jharkhand and an Executive Committee member of CRPP was convicted and given death sentence in the Chilkhari case along with Manoj Rajwar, Chatrapati Mandal and Anil Ram by a sessions’ court in Giridih, Jharkhand. In the Chilkhari case, it is alleged that following the attack of CPI (Maoist) guerrillas on a cultural programme on 26 October 2007, 19 people were killed which also included the son of former chief minister of Jharkhand, Babulal Marandi. The death penalty was pronounced by the judge on the basis of extremely patchy evidence produced by the police/prosecution solely counting on the statements of three ‘witnesses’. Recognising the criminal framing-up of Jitan Marandi and others in the Chilkhari case by the government and its police, Jharkhand High Court dismissed the death sentence and acquitted all the four accused on 15 December 2011. This is a vindication of the innocence of Jitan Marandi and a resounding victory for the continued peoples’ struggle which fought for the release of the four political prisoners condemned to the gallows.
While the consistent peoples’ struggle has defeated the Indian state’s conspiracy of silencing Jitan Marandi’s indomitable voice of resistance expressed through his songs, many others – including political prisoners – languish in the jails of this country awaiting justice and freedom from impending judicial execution. The vindictive nature behind the use of death penalty by the judiciary and the state becomes clear from the fact that the target of death penalty are invariably from the oppressed and marginalised sections of the society. Be it oppressed nationalities such as Kashmiris and Khalistanis, religious minorities such as Muslims and Sikhs, dalits and other oppressed castes, adivasis and the poor are invariably condemned to the death row. Therefore, the holding of this convention on death penalty is a collective recognition by all the participants that the struggle against capital punishment does not end with the acquittal of Jitan Marandi. Rather, it strengthens our collective resolve to intensify the struggle for abolishing death sentence once and for all, while demanding the unconditional release of all political prisoners presently on death row. More than four hundred delegates and participants from Jharkhand, Bihar, Odisha, Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, Uttarakhand and other regions attended the day-long convention. Prof. Amit Bhattacharya, the Secretary General of CRPP presided over the convention.
The convention started with a cultural performance by Poly Varghese from Bangalore who played Mohan Veena. Jharkhand Aven, Revolutionary Cultural Front of JNU and artistes from Punjab also performed, while Dastangoi staged Dastan-e-Sedition. A short film on Jitan Marandi was screened.
S A R Geelani, the working president of CRPP said in his welcome address to the delegates and participants that through this convention we are initiating the campaign for scrapping the inhuman and criminal provision of death sentence from the statue books. He remembered the plight of all those condemned prisoners languishing in jails who still hope that like Jitan Marandi they too will one day be able to walk free from the shackles of imprisonment and the shadow of death. Perarivalan, Santhan, Murugan, Bhai Jagtar Singh, Prof. Devinderpal Singh Bhullar, Afzal Guru and others have all been condemned to death without any conclusive proof to implicate them in the crimes they are accused of. Even though the law itself requires that this draconian measure be resorted to only in “the rarest of rare” cases and after guilt is proven “beyond any reasonable doubt”, death sentence is often pronounced after denying a fair trial and based on framed-up charges, manufactured ‘evidence’ and false witnesses, or merely “to satisfy the collective conscience of the society”. Clearly, death sentence is nothing but an instrument in the hands of the state to target and throttle all voices of political dissent or resistance coming from the oppressed people and to perpetuate injustice against them. He therefore appealed everyone to unite and brace for a sustained struggle for the scrapping of death penalty and for the release of all prisoners condemned to death.
B D Sharma of Bharat Jan Vikas Andolan in his speech questioned the present system which allows the real criminals to roam freely while punishing innocents with death penalty are sent to the gallows without an iota of evidence against them. This apart, the establishment has done away with even this fig-leaf of law and justice by executing individuals in fake encounters and throwing their bodies in the forests, as has recently been done with Azad and Kishenji. Summary executions and judicial killings are being simultaneously resorted to by the Indian government to eliminate its political opponents through stratagem while pretending to prepare the grounds for peace talks. What was the crime of Azad, Kishenji, Jiten Marandi, he asked. Did we fight against the foreigners for independence in order only to be the slaves of foreign corporations and to snatch away the land and forest of the adivasis and other oppressed people? Fighting in self-defence is not a crime, but the people who are resisting this marauding system are being termed as criminals and hunted down. The existing legal system too is a system of slavery inherited from colonialism and is completely anti-people. This regime of law establishes the right of the state over jal-jangal-zameen at the expense of the people, and therefore this system must be changed to re-establish the primacy of the people over their own destiny.
Aparna Marandi expressed her relief at the acquittal of her life-partner of Jitan Marandi. She thanked all progressive intellectuals, individuals the people at large and various organisations for responding to her appeal and for contributing this favourable outcome through their solidarity. However, she also made it clear that till Jitan Marandi is released from the prison, the prisoners on death row are freed and capital punishment is repealed, there is no cause for celebration. It is only a partial victory made possible by the collective effort of peoples’ struggle, and the larger struggle has to be continued. The persecution of Jitan Marandi symbolises the thousands in this country who are being targeted by the government in the name of countering Maoism for raising their voice against exploitation and oppression. She appealed to everyone to visit Jharkhand and find out the extent of state repression on the people and movements who are fighting for their rights and for justice.
Prof. Amit Bhattacharya, the secretary general of CRPP, while reiterating the conspiratorial manner of framing-up Jitan Marandi and three others in the Chilkhari case, pointed out that this is not an isolated case. For instance, eight peasants were in a similar manner convicted and condemned to death by a court in 2002-03 in the Jhalda murder case on the basis of just one ‘witness’. It is clear that class bias and class hatred of the judiciary against the poor and the marginalised people strongly influences the pronouncement of death penalty. So is the case with the political prisoners who are languishing in jails in their thousands. All forms of draconian laws are used against the accused persons, be it acts on sedition, UAPA, NSA, etc. The use of death penalty has never acted as a deterrent to crime. Rather, it is based on a faulty and medievalist notion of retributive justice. Moreover, innocents are often framed and condemned to death. In a majority of countries in the world death penalty has either been abolished or being taken out of practice. So in this happy occasion of Jitan Marandi’s acquittal, we must build up a strong movement to raise the demand for abolition of death penalty, for scrapping the law of sedition and for the release of political prisoners.
Prof. P. Koya, Convenor, National Confederation of Human Rights Organisations (NCHRO) who could not attend the convention sent his message, where he said that death sentence is a tool used by the state to crush all forms of political dissent. India is among the few countries which still retain this draconian provision, and it is very often the poor who are unable to arrange adequate legal defence that become the target of capital punishment. The government-appointed defense lawyers invariably collude with the prosecution rather than defending the accused, as is evident from the Parliament Attack case. He on behalf of the NCHRO extended full support to the demands raised by the convention, and stressed that the government officials and the police personnel responsible for framing-up false cases against innocent individuals like Jitan Marandi must be brought to book and given exemplary punishment. He also appealed to strengthen the struggle for setting free the condemned prisoners convicted through the so-called anti-terror laws in Rajiv Gandhi assassination case and Parliament Attack case, and to work together for the repeal of death penalty.
P. A. Sebastian of the Indian Association of Peoples’ Lawyers (IAPL) asked how judicious it is to give the judges the power to decide the fate of the citizens – their life and death. Every human being, including a judge, is prone to errors and mistake. The trial court condemned Jitan Marandi to death along with three others, but the HC acquitted them. This means that the trial court made an error. But it is not only errors all the time. There is also complicity and biasness among the judges. The powers-that-be have singled out the Maoists as the single-largest internal security threat. Some of the judges believe the rulers of the country when they say so, and hand out severest of punishments and arbitrary judgements against Maoists or alleged Maoists, which include death sentence. The state is now carrying out a war against the adivasis – the original inhabitants of the land – and their land is being given out to the MNCs and Indian corporations. The adivasis are termed as ‘encroachers’ and the ‘greatest security threat to India’. The people are struggling against this violence by the system, and the resistance is nothing but counter-violence. He appealed to everyone to come together and fight against the violence by the system.
Dr. Aparna of CPI ML (New Democracy) said that in the areas where people are fighting against the government’s policies are being jailed, slapped with false charges and given unfair punishments. Thousands of people in Chhattisgarh and other war-zones have been put behind bars without even having a single hearing for years. In Uttar Pradesh too, many peasant leaders have been put behind bars for protesting against the government. Muslim youth in large numbers all across the country have been imprisoned with fabricated charges and none of them have been convicted. The police officers who are responsible for fabricating evidence and witnesses are not yet been punished. So, the timely demand made by today’s convention that the policemen implicated in slapping false cases be punished is a step in the right direction. The need is also to raise voices against the death penalty meted out to Afzal Guru, who has been condemned just to assuage the ‘collective conscience of the nation’. The fight must be continued for the release of Afzal along with other prisoners on death row.
Pushkar Raj of PUCL observed that state violence is at its peak between 2008 and 2010. Police shoots to kill and it does not even make it to the news, unlike fifty years back. The fight against abolishing state violence is important for reducing violence in the society. Many countries have abolished death penalty, and have been able to reduce violence in the society. However, violent states like UAE, US, India etc. have retained this penalty without any positive effect. PUCL has studied hundreds of cases of individuals who have been given death sentence. In a large number of cases such sentences have been set aside by the SC. PUCL estimate that India has hanged many innocent people in the last six decades. The status of the judicial system in India is pathetic. The poor and the marginalised have been awarded death sentence while no poor person have received this sentence in India so far. This has been accepted even by the SC. Justice Bhagwati has declared that death sentence is capricious and arbitrary, without any consistency in pronouncing this sentence. Within this decade, in 2005 70 persons have been condemned, 40 in 2006 and 100 in 2007. So the figure is increasing.
The decision to abolish death penalty is not a legal but a political question. The argument that this punishment is given in the rarest of rare cases and is an exception does not carry any weight. This is a question of our humanity – therefore we must oppose it in principle, and not differentiating who is being implicated and why. He expressed hope that as a result of the collective efforts of the people, this draconian penalty will be removed from the statute books in the near future.
K N Pandit of the Visthapan Virodhi Jan Vikas Andolan noted in his speech that the Indian penal code is inherited from the colonial regime which used this code to repress the people of the subcontinent. Has anyone belonging to the privileged and moneyed classes been ever given the death sentence, he asked. Muslims, adivasis and dalits on the other hand have been facing the brunt of this provision. The state falsely implicated Jitan under a pre-planned conspiracy. The Police abducted him, and their aim was to annihilate him in a false encounter. But due to the intervention of the civil and democratic rights organisations, his life was saved. Jitan’s arrest was done under UAPA for ‘instigating’ the public in a rally called by CRPP. Jitan along with another four were implicated. Then why he and not others targeted? This is because Jitan was making the people of Jharkhand conscious of their exploitation and appealed to them through his cultural activities for changing the exploitative system. The police made up the false story of Jitan getting involved in a Maoist action, and produced false witnesses, and on the basis of this the lower court gave its wrong judgment. The HC has set it aside, and it is a victory of the collective fight of the people. He pointed out that if people are united, significant legal victories too can be won. The speaker demanded punishment for the police officers who are guilty of framing evidence against Jitan Marandi and three others.
Arundhati Roy, writer in her address to the convention said that not to be against death penalty is to be barbaric. The present dispensation kills people wither through the courts or through fake encounters. The Indian govt. wants multinational corporations to loot and plunder our resources and minerals. The same companies along with Indian companies are in Africa and South America to plunder the resources of these regions. There is a large peoples’ movement against these corporations. Today Indian state is showing its contempt for the people, as is seen in the way it treated Kishenji, whose killing is an expression of hatred beyond politics. This hatred we have witnessed for decades for the people of Kashmir and the North East. The Naxalites raised the slogan of land to the tiller. Now the struggle is to save whatever land our people have. The state is claiming the right over peoples’ land and resources. In doing so, the rulers have criminalised the people. Presently they are branded as terrorists, and are being crushed. These days we do not hear much about Bastar, Jharkhand or Jangal Mahal. That is because these areas have been seized, converted into war zones. In comparison to what is to come, Operation Green Hunt will become a small thing. There is an all out preparation for annihilation of the adivasi and marginalised people. There is going to be a huge war in our parts. The state is trying its best to finish off the movements from within by sending in infiltrators, saboteurs and to divide us from within. We must find ways to counter these tactics, we must intensify our preparation for our fight back, she noted.
Amit Bhaduri, emeritus professor in JNU, pointed out that in more than 15 per cent of the cases of death penalty, the condemned are in all probability innocent. Jitan, Afzal Guru are burning examples of such cases. With such a high rate of error, should the state still retain this form of punishment? There are two types of killing: one is the direct form of killing like judicial killing etc. The indirect form is the much-practiced form of fake encounters. Illegal killing has to be stopped while we make efforts to scrap death penalty from the statute books. But much more important than these is the criminalisation of entire communities like the adivasis. After terming the existence of a community illegal, they are called Maoists and repressed. British termed Bhagat Singh a terrorist and killed him. Now no one dare call him a terrorist. So who is a terrorist and who is a freedom fighter depends on the politics of the day and on the question of justice. The question we must all ask ourselves, to whom does our country belong? Is it that of the Tatas and the Ambanis? Or is it of the marginalised people? The answer to this question depends on who is a traitor and who is a patriot, and not in what way the rulers define a person or a community of people.
At the end of the convention the following resolutions were passed:
1. Long Live the United Struggle of the People for the Acquittal of People’s Cultural Activist Jiten Marandi and others. Bring to book the police and the politicians who were hand in glove in fabricating evidence against him.
It took exactly 3 years 8 months and 3 days for the sustained campaign from all democratic and progressive sections of the masses of the people to realise the final acquittal of Jiten Marandi and 3 others. Further the case slapped on Jiten Marandi and the consequent award of death sentence to him and 3 others is a pattern in the method of impunity that the so-called guardians of law indulge in to perpetuate an undeclared emergency in the length and breadth of the subcontinent where the poorest of the poor are fighting against a sustained policy of loot and plunder of their resources, their lives and livelihoods.
It is high time that we demand that those who are responsible for such acts of impunity be brought to book. For the anger and anguish that raged among the people of this subcontinent who rallied strongly and consistently for the acquittal of Jiten also showed the acceptance of Jiten as a people’s artist, as someone who could convey through his songs and performances their plight and their dreams. And that is why for once the collective will of the people could challenge this act of impunity of the powers that be which is going unabated in many parts of the subcontinent in the form of false cases, re-arrests, non-production in the court for long durations without any valid reason, torture, disappearance, fake encounters, rape, the list is long.
Once again as in all such instances of acts of impunity of the state, here we can see the growing tendency of the state to criminalise all forms of dissent let alone the criminal nexus of the police-politician-judiciary in twisting procedures and norms that can safeguard the rights of the accused—especially when he/she is a political prisoner. The words of the defence counsel of Jiten Marandi are more eloquent than the judgement: “The police was not clear when they started their hunt for Jiten Marandi. The Devri police station had sent a letter (letter no. 205/08 dated February 21, 2008) to the In-Charge at Nimiyaghat police station which asked that a search and arrest warrant be issued in the name of the accused Jiten Marandi alias Shyamlal Kisku who hails from Nimiyaghat. It is clear that instead of arresting the Jiten Marandi that police was searching for, they arrested a different Jiten Marandi.”
We demand that the police who deliberately arrested Jitan Marandi notwithstanding his credentials as a people’s artist known by one and all in Jharkhand be brought to book. Further they have produced false-witnesses of criminal antecedents to identify Jitan Marandi before the court of law. To lie before the court of law after taking oath tantamounts to perjury and criminal proceedings should be initiated against such police officials failing which the acts of impunity of the state will continue unabated.
2. Totally Abolish Death Penalty
This convention recognises that the death penalty reflects societal inequalities; that it is part of the deliberate perpetuation of the state. In the Indian subcontinent the various manifestations of this bias is reflected through the feudal structures of power in the form of caste coalesced in class along with the communal prejudice on the Muslim minority and other nationalities. With the increasing onslaught on the masses of the people in the form of Liberalisation, Privatisation and Globalisation for the maximisation of profit for the imperialist bourgeoisie and their local agents, the state also has teethed itself with more draconian laws to stem the tide of the growing indignation of the people. It is with the help of a surfeit of draconian laws that the state is trying to impose its ideological sanction of the need for a penalising national security state further emboldened with the US led so-called war against terror. This has increased and made complex the fight against the total abolishment of death penalty as it is fundamentally entwined with a national security state armed with all kinds of anti-people laws which makes it easier to inflict capital punishment as a form of deterrent against the rising indignation of the people. While driving home the increasing instances of death penalties being implemented by the state, and at the same time focussing primarily on the inequality within the death penalty, this convention questions the very legitimacy of the death penalty itself being utilised by the state to legitimise its truncated sense of justice.
As long as the lived reality of inequality endures in the Indian subcontinent through the systematic dog-eat-dog policies of various governments, such a reality may be weighed against the consequences its legal system evokes in its people’s name. If the Indian state continues to embrace [capital punishment] in the name of retributive or utilitarian values, then inequality remains not just a “tolerable” value for the government and the policy makers who vouches unabashedly by a system based on greed and unrequited accumulation especially in the era of Liberalisation, Privatisation and Globalisation. Inequality remains a value that is acted upon and thus preserved inextricably through the state’s persistent willingness to use the punishment of death.
Over half of Asian countries have abolished the death penalty or have not carried out executions in the last 10 years. Majority of the European countries have passed legislations to put an end to this barbaric and inhuman practice. In this context India which claims to be the largest democracy in the world have no reason to continue with such barbaric and inhuman methods to ensure the sanction of the state. This convention demands total abolishment of death penalty as a form of punishment by the state.
3. Strongly condemn the vilification campaign of the state targeted at CRPP and other people’s organisations. Oppose the campaign of the state to instil fear and isolate the voices against the anti-people policies of the state.
CRPP condemns strongly the statement of Jitendra Singh, Minister of State for home affairs, India that the committee is a frontal organisation of the CPI (Maoist)[See TOI 8 December 2011]. This is nothing but a calculated attempt from the state to castigate any platform, organisation or political opinion that is against the policies of the government.
The CRPP has been consistently bringing out the acts of impunity of the government in the form of illegal detention, arrests, torture of political dissidents be it Maoists who believe in the well being of one and all through a society free from all forms of exploitation and oppression, the Kashmiris, Nagas, Manipuris, Assamese, Kamtapuris who have been fighting for their right to self-determination, the dalits and adivasis who have been fighting for their lives and livelihoods and last but not the least the Muslim community in India who have become the target of hate campaigns by the state further emboldened by the so-called war against terror. Against this tyranny of lawlessness of a state aggressively promoting the policies of Liberalisation, Privatisation and Globalisation (LPG) totally subservient to imperialist interests, the CRPP has been steadfastly demanding, ever since it came together as a platform of various individuals and organisations, the unconditional release of all political prisoners who have been kept behind bars, many of them without trial for years and with numerous politically motivated cases slapped on them.
The CRPP for the first time brought forth the demand that the Indian government should recognise the status of political prisoners as it is also a signatory to the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights (ICPR) of the United Nations in which the rights of the political prisoners have been mentioned categorically. Through all its activities what CRPP has tried to highlight and at the same time unite public opinion has been on the growing concern and anger of the diminishing democratic space for the most exploited and oppressed masses of the people of this subcontinent. That to argue for the enhancement of democratic space for everyone so that they can live a life of dignity and well being goes against the interest of the powers that be so as to be vilified as a “threat” speaks volumes of the real face of democracy in the subcontinent. More so at a time when the largest military mobilisation—the paramilitary, army, police—of the state are being utilised to maim, rape and kill the adivasis and dalits of the subcontinent which is euphemistically called by the home minister of India as Operation Green Hunt, all in the name of development. And it is in the backdrop of an alarmingly growing number of political prisoners from the regions of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa, Bihar, Jangal Mahal etc., who were fighting against the four dreaded Ds—Displacement, Destitution, Destruction and Death—and a large number of Muslim political prisoners let alone from the nationality movements that the CRPP came into existence as a demand of various people’s movements. It becomes important for a desperate state as an extension of the same policy to silence all voices of dissent and to create fear psychosis among the people to vilify and criminally profile platforms such as the CRPP. It also shows the strength of the CRPP in that it could bring together all possible voices across the subcontinent which is arguing against the anti-people, lawless acts of the Indian state.
We at the CRPP further take strong exception in the manner in which the media has carried the report which was more insinuatory than mere reporting only to add to the grist mill of sensation driven news.
We call upon all democratic and freedom loving people of the subcontinent to come forth and condemn unequivocally this desperate attempt of the state to vilify and criminalise all political opinions that are contrary to its will. The detailed statement of the Minister of State showing a whole lot of organisations such as CPI (ML) (ND), RDF, PDFI, DSU, CPI (ML) (Naxalbari) and other people’s organisations as “being watched” closely by the eyes and ears of the government provokes only a sense of siege mentality that the state wants to instil in the psyche of the general public. We need to stand firmly against all such fascist intentions of the state while arguing for the inevitable need to roll back all anti-people policies of the state that has threatened the lives of the masses of the people.
4. This Convention against Death penalty at the IIC, New Delhi strongly condemns and opposes the life sentence for six terms each imposed on five people, Chakka Shivarama Krishna, Dunna Dange, Elavatty Leela Krishna, Gandrakotta Pentaiah and Lanjupally Rani by Bhopal District Court under UAPA 18, 20, 121, 122, 123 IPC, Arms Act.
