Police crackdown at Ramlila against fundamental right: Santosh Hegde

Justice Santosh Hegde, Lokpal bill drafting committee member, today termed the police action against Baba Ramdev and his supporters here as violation of "fundamental rights of citizens" and said it "brought back memories" of the Emergency.

"Everyone who was peacefully sleeping there was beaten up and thrown out..Quite an amount of brutality could be seen there. I am very very sad and it brings back the memories of June 25-26, 1975," the Karnataka lok ayukta said.

"This is violation of the fundamental rights of citizens and also a violation of the human rights of the people who were present there. It is the fundamental right of the citizens to gather peacefully to demonstrate and till yesterday nothing untoward had happened which gave room for any suspicion that there may be a law and order problem," Justice Hegde, a former judge of the Supreme Court, said.

He said that permission had been given to Ramdev to use the Ramlila ground "may be for yoga but the government of the day knew that it was not yoga that was going on there."

He said the demonstration was "not physical, it was purely vocal...Till 11 pm, everything was OK for the government and suddenly at 12, Baba Ramdev was picked up."