Rights activist’s arrest flouts SC guidelines

In a criminal justice system, which presumes the accused to be innocent till proven guilty and the right of silence is an unassailable right of the accused, arrest and remand are unnecessary before conviction. Remanding the accused to the prison will only be a strain on the exchequer and an intrusion into the basic human right of the accused. 

Right to life and liberty of movement are fundamental rights. They cannot be curbed except through law. In the days of more and more public scrutiny of every offence by the social and other mass media, there is a shrill cry for arrest of persons accused of crime. This is without understanding the difference between incarceration after conviction or as remand prisoner. The state also plays to the gallery with unnecessary arrests. Arrests are also made to silence dissent and to instill fear in the minds of the opposition. 

The Supreme Court, in DK Basu vs State of West Bengal, laid a series of guidelines to be exercised, while arresting any person. The police officer who is arresting an accused has to prepare a memo, identify himself / herself to the accused, get the memo signed by a family member of the arrestee or a respectable person of the locality; the arrestee is entitled to be helped by a friend or a relative, etc. The entire process of arrest, as per the guidelines, ensures that the arrest is not done in secrecy. The arrestee is given the right to legal representation and ought to be produced before a Judicial Magistrate within 24 hours of the arrest, apart from providing him / her medical assistance, etc. 

The State follows the DK Basu guidelines more in the breach routinely. Nakeeran, an office-bearer of a Chennai based rights and advocacy group, Arappor Iyakkam, was arrested at the wee-hours of  November 2, 2017, after he spoke up against a temple encroachment at Ramapuram. Chandramohan of Arappor says, “The Rayala police reached his house at 4.30am in the morning and arrested him. They did not let him use his mobile phone to make any calls. They took him to the Central Crime Branch (CCB) and then the Kunrathur D13 police station, and after that, produced him before a judicial magistrate, who remanded him to Puzhal Central Prison. Only after he was remanded, was he allowed to tell his father. They made sure that we did not interrupt, while the procedure was going on.” 

Such an arrest is against the Supreme Court guidelines. It was unnecessary, as Nakeeran is neither a criminal, nor would abscond and be unavailable for investigation and trial. To treat rights activists like a criminal is nothing but the reminiscence of the practice of British ethos by the state police. 

The FIR has been filed for offences under Sections 143 (unlawful assembly), 147 (rioting), 149 (member of unlawful assembly, guilty of offence committed in prosecution of common object), 504 (Intentional insult, with intent to provoke breach of the peace), 294(b) (sings, recites or utters any obscene song, ballad or words, in or near any public place), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) and 50 (1) (criminal intimidation) of the IPC. 

The FIR also names others of Arappor Iyakkam, thus it will not be a surprise if they are also arrested, flouting the law / guidelines only to silence those who gather courage to expose the corrupt and fight for justice. It is time for all of us to raise our voices against such undemocratic abuse of powers by the state police; lest we be in an unproclaimed emergency era.