Asian Window

A year after the arrest of Dr Binayak Sen, one of the state’s most eminent doctors, Chattisgarh state authorities have gone and arrested another civil liberties activist, journalist and film-maker Ajay T.G., reports Siddharth Vardarajan in The Hindu

On May 5, the Chhattisgarh police announced the arrest of Ajay T.G., a Raipur-based journalist and filmmaker, under the State’s draconian Special Public Security Act (PSA). He has been charged with sedition under the Indian Penal Code and with having unlawful contact with a banned organisation, the Communist Party of India (Maoist), under Sections 3, 4 and 8 of the PSA. Like Binayak Sen, who was arrested last year on May 14, Ajay is a leading member of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties. He is also a prominent social worker whose contribution to the education of young girls from poor slum-dwelling families is well known. The circumstances leading to his arrest are so bizarre and reflect so poorly on Chhattisgarh’s approach to dealing with the naxalite problem that they bear recounting in some detail.

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For information and updates on Dr Binayak Sen’s arrest click here.

Twenty-two Nobel Laureates have written to Indian President Pratibha Patil asking for the release of Binayak Sen who was recently awarded the Jonathan Mann Award for Global Health and Human Rights. They want him to personally receive the award at a ceremony to be held in Washington  D.C. on May 29. Read that report here

[Pic: A file picture of Dr Binayak Sen with his young patients in Chattisgarh]

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