[On Friday, a three-judge panel of India’s Supreme Court denied a petition to create a special independent investigation in the case and said the activists would remain under house arrest for four more weeks. The lone dissenting justice said the conduct of the police was “disconcerting” and raised doubts about their ability to pursue a fair investigation.]
By Joanna Slater
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Rights
activist advocate Sudha Bharadwaj addresses a news conference in
New
Delhi on June 7, 2018. (Photo IANS)
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FARIDABAD,
India — As a lawyer in a poor but mineral-rich part
of India, Sudha Bharadwaj took on cases that other advocates were afraid to
touch. She represented workers wrongfully dismissed by a cement company,
villagers who were illegally evicted from their land and women who alleged
sexual assault by security forces.
Then, early one morning last month, the law
came for her.
A police team of nearly a dozen people
entered the apartment that Bharadwaj shares with her daughter in an industrial
city near New Delhi. They took computers and phones and demanded passwords for
email accounts. Then they arrested Bharadwaj under an anti-terrorism statute
and later told reporters she was linked to a violent conspiracy, which she
vehemently denies.
Four other prominent activists across the
country were also taken into custody on the same day. All of them — like
Bharadwaj — are highly critical of the current government and outspoken
advocates for India’s most disadvantaged, whether indigenous tribal peoples or
Dalits, formerly known as “untouchables.”
Now their case has become a litmus test for
the rule of law and freedom of expression in India. Opponents of the government
of Prime Minister Narendra Modi say the arrests were an effort to suppress
dissent ahead of next year’s national elections. Under the Modi government,
violence by right-wing Hindu supremacist groups has increased, as has
intimidation of journalists.
On Friday, a three-judge panel of India’s
Supreme Court denied a petition to create a special independent investigation
in the case and said the activists would remain under house arrest for four
more weeks. The lone dissenting justice said the conduct of the police was
“disconcerting” and raised doubts about their ability to pursue a fair
investigation.
Last month, police claimed at a news
conference that they had “conclusive proof” linking the five to a banned
militant group that sought to purchase weapons and ammunition to wage war
against the state.
Central to the authorities’ case against
Bharadwaj is a mysterious typewritten letter that was leaked to the media. The
police say Bharadwaj, 56, wrote the letter and that its intended recipient was
a senior Maoist rebel seeking to overthrow India’s government. Bharadwaj has
said the letter is “totally concocted” and includes references to people she
has never met. Experts say the letter’s contents strain credulity.
“Anybody who knows her clearly knows that all
of this is rotten,” said Shalini Gera, a lawyer who works in Chhattisgarh, the
state where Bharadwaj was based for three decades. Inspired by Bharadwaj, Gera
gave up a career in biotechnology in the United States to return to India and
train as a lawyer. “It is really her legal work that is being challenged,” said
Gera.
Bharadwaj’s path to trade unionism and legal
activism was far from typical. Born in Boston, she spent the first 11 years of
her life in the United States and the United Kingdom. Her mother was a
distinguished economist, and Bharadwaj attended the Indian Institute of
Technology, one of the country’s most elite universities, where she studied
mathematics. (She later relinquished her American citizenship.)
In the years that followed, Bharadwaj moved
into a shack in an iron ore mining town in Chhattisgarh, a state in central
India with abundant forests and a large tribal population. She worked to
organize thousands of laborers at iron ore mines and fought a two-decade battle
on behalf of workers fired by a major cement factory. Eventually Bharadwaj found
herself involved in so much legal work that she decided to become a lawyer
herself.
She adopted a child in 1996 and lived a
modest activist’s life. Maaysha Nehra, her daughter, recalled that when she was
10 or 11, she complained to Bharadwaj about their impecunious circumstances.
“She said, ‘You will see later that I have earned people, not money,’ ” said
Nehra, who is now 21.
Bharadwaj’s cases — she represented clients
challenging the acquisition of land by major corporations and those seeking
justice for extrajudicial killings by police officers — also earned her
powerful adversaries.
“She is anti-establishment,” a senior police
officer in Chhattisgarh told an Indian newspaper in 2015. “We don’t like or
respect the work she does.”
Chhattisgarh is part of a swath of central
India struggling with one of the world’s longest-running insurgencies. For
decades, Maoist rebels — also called Naxalites — have sought to establish a
communist state. But their reach has waned: The number of districts affected by
left-wing extremism has fallen by more than half over the last decade,
according to the government.
Now, police allege that Bharadwaj sought
support and funds from the Maoists, charges she denies. The origins of the case
against her and the other activists arrested in August trace back to an event
that was held Jan. 1.
On that day, Dalit organizations marked the
200th anniversary of a colonial-era battle that is viewed as a major victory
over caste-based oppression. But the commemorations turned hostile as
upper-caste groups and Dalits clashed, leaving one person dead.
Police in the western Indian city of Pune
began an investigation into the violence. They arrested five other activists in
June and claimed to find a password-protected stash of correspondence. In 13
letters leaked to the media, there are references to a possible assassination
plot against the prime minister and purchases of arms from Nepal.
The alleged missive from Bharadwaj mentions
operations against “enemies,” cites links to separatists in Kashmir and refers
to nine other activists by their first and last names. In at least three
places, the letter also uses spellings particular to Marathi — a regional
language that Bharadwaj does not speak.
Shivaji Bodhke, the joint commissioner of
police in Pune, declined to address inconsistencies in the letter. “Anyone can
say [it’s] fabricated,” he said. “We are confident about evidence we have
presented in court.”
The letter is “beyond absurd,” said Ajai
Sahni, executive director of the Institute for Conflict Management and an
expert on militant groups in South Asia. Maoists do not use real names and
refer to operations obliquely or through code words, he said. “It is utterly
and completely inconceivable that anyone even loosely associated with this
group would not get the message on secrecy.”
For the last month, Bharadwaj has been
confined to her small apartment in the back corner of a modest housing colony.
Three policewomen are living with her, while two other police officers keep a
bored watch outside in 12-hour shifts as monkeys scamper nearby.
Nehra, Bharadwaj’s daughter, says the notion
that her mother is a criminal makes her alternately angry and sad. “How can you
blame someone like this?” she asked. “This is not done. This is not fair at
all.”
In India’s slow-moving legal system, the case
is likely to drag on for years. “There is no real intent to take this to any
logical conclusion of prosecution,” said Sahni, the terrorism expert. “It’s a
process of punishment by trial.”
Niha Masih contributed to this report.
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