Judge quotes Varavara Rao to Q Branch in Maoist case

CHENNAI: A sessions court judge in Tamil Nadu has quoted well-known left activist and poet Varavara Rao during a trial of a Q Branch case in which two Maoists are prime accused and have been lodged in jail without bail since 2016.

Unhappy with the way the investigators are dragging the case for nearly seven years, Judge Pa. U. Chemmal, Kancheepuram sessions court quoted from, ‘Captive Imagination: Letters from Prison’, by Varavara Rao, who was arrested in August 2018 by NIA in connection with Bhima-Koregaon violence that happened in January that year.

Varavara Rao was released on bail on medical grounds after five years in August 2022. The accused in the Q Branch case, Palani alias Mahalingam was arrested in 2016 from Thrissur, Kerala, while the other accused Reena Joyce Mary was nabbed from Kancheepuram the same year.

The two – both believed to be strong Naxal activists – were allegedly giving training to fresh recruits in Kodaikanal, when the police busted the training camp in the year 2008 and killed Maoist Naveen Prasad in an encounter.

Two of their alleged associates – Ajitha and Kuppu Devraj – were killed in a police encounter in Kerala later.

“I am recording this with a heavy heart,” said the judge during trial on September 13.

“Have cases been registered as per SC guidelines in connection with the fake encounter death of Ajitha and Kuppu Devaraj? The investigation officer has not given any explanation,” the judge noted.

“Varavara Rao may be facing cases. But I am quoting his poem like that of Tagore and Bharathi.”

Open those dockets

And you will see our faces in those papers.

You fold us lengthwise

And like mailbags sealed

Addressed and tossed aside,

You scribble adjournments on our backs

And cast us aside.

Between adjournments,

Arguments and counterarguments

Men’s heads roll

And their hearts are frozen

Between penalty and goal

In the court halls

Of justice.

— reads the poem quoted by Judge Chemmal.

The case was later posted for further hearing.