Arun Thomas Ferreira, who spent four years in jail on charges of being a Maoist, said the administration has come out with a new idea of re-arresting "political prisoners" to suppress their ideology.
Mumbai resident Arun Thomas Ferreira, who spent four years in jail on charges of being a Maoist, today said he was innocent and alleged torture at the hands of police while in prison.
Blasting the Maharashtra government, he said the administration has come out with a new idea of re-arresting "political prisoners" to suppress their ideology.
Ferreira is currently on bail in a case filed by the Gadchiroli district police last year. He walked out of Nagpur Central Jail in September 2011 after being acquitted by a Nagpur Court in 10 criminal cases lodged against him in 2007.
However, his freedom was shortlived. "I was re-arrested from the gates of the jail and two more cases were slapped against me," Ferreira claimed.
"After another three-month battle and following an outcry against the state's highhandedness, I was finally set free on January 4, 2012."
Of the two new cases against him, he was acquitted in one while bail was granted in the other, he said.
"I had to spend more than four-and-a half years of my life fighting to prove my innocence. I was a political prisoner and a Leftist. And like me there were 27 other political prisoners languishing in the Nagpur jail."
It has become a regular practice for the police to re-arrest political prisoners in some case of other, he said.
Recalling his experience in prison, Ferreira said, "I was tortured and made to undergo narco-analysis not once but two times. The courts, however, did not believe the police story and I was acquitted in 10 cases."
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