Rearresting political prisoners on bail violative of SC norm: Ferreira

“The state is the custodian of human rights and the onus is on it to protect it,” said Arun Ferreira days after he walking out on bail from Nagpur Jail, where he was housed for over four years.

Ferreira made the statement to a packed conference at the Press Club in the city on Wednesday.

When asked questions about the Naxal violence, Ferreira hinted that it often started due to the increasingly repressive force used by the state in a bid to quell any political dissent.

“Any movement cannot be seen through that shade. In places like Egypt where there has been a revolution, the agitation started peacefully, turned violent but returned to being peaceful. Here too the movement is having its phases,” he added.

Ferreira was addressing the media on his treatment in the lock-up, the hierarchy there, the oft-flouted Supreme Court order on re-arresting people out on bail as also using force on dissenters of the state policy. “Statistics in Maharashtra show that the state is jailing more and more political prisoners, with the number of such undertrials having gone up from 40 in October 2010 to 125 in December. They seemed to have learned all ways of torturing people without leaving any marks,” claimed Ferreira.

Slamming the police ploy to not produce prisoners before a court after arrest, he said, “They flout the SC order of putting up all the pending cases in front of the judge.”