WHEN the Maoists kill hundreds of innocent villagers-men, women and children-we don’t hear howls of protest from the self styled civil liberty activists. When the victims of Maoist terror, women who were kept captive and beastily gang raped by Maoist thugs escape somehow and narrate their agonizing tale to the civil society we don’t hear the outraged cry of violated human dignity. When the Maoists in their barbaric display of insanity murder and mime three month old and four year old toddlers in cold blood we don’t hear the professional jholawallahs staging their theatrical dismay over the mindless violence of the so-called red revolutionaries’ misplaced sense of intimidation. We are often confounded by their deafening silence, stonewalling rationalisation of accidental mistake.
Their version of war against the state is blowing up schools, hospitals, buses ferrying vanvasis from remote interiors of Dantaewada with their forest produce to nearby market place to sell them and in return buy rice, salt and other minimal provisions of daily life. The Maoists routinely blow up and mercilessly cause death of the state police and CRPF jawans with landmines and bombs. The overground friends of these sadist brigands don’t tell their underground outlaws that the state has a duty to protect the lives and property of its citizens. Rather they try to justify these mind boggling cruelty as part of the vanvasi revolt against the oppressive state. They stop every development effort of the state but they hold out Maoist mayhem as the protest of the tribals against decades of urban neglect and government apathy. They brazenly use the Vanvasi as cannon fodder to advance their version of red anarchy.
That is why the bizarre exhibition of outrage, anger and anguish over the verdict of the lower court sentencing Binayak Sen and two others to life term for sedition, criminal conspiracy and collaboration with Maoists sounds bogus if not spurious. What is it that these men and women are protesting? Do they want us to believe that Binayak Sen, because he is Binayak Sen is above the law of the land? That no court, no police, no authority has a right to prosecute him however dubious his actions are or however criminally involved he is with the Maoist merchants of death? We are not discussing here the merit of the cases against Sen. It is for the court to decide.
The Maoists do not make a secret of their political line. They openly propagate sedition. They call the state a sham. They have no faith in the democratically constituted governments, they do not believe or participate in elections. They denounce the Indian Constitution. They declare – their literature is explicit – that they are waging a war against the state. The definition of the sedition law is this: If you wage a war against the sate, if you preach violence against the state, if you work towards overthrowing the constitutionally elected governments you are liable to be punished under sedition act. The Chhattisgarh government has enacted a special act-Chhattisgarh Special Public Safety Act-in the face of growing Maoist violence to protect citizens and tackle the menace.
Binayak Sen was first arrested on suspicion of aiding and abetting the Maoist activities. Then also there was a huge outburst of international condemnation and later he was released on bail on a court order on health grounds. His plea had been rejected twice earlier. Now his supporters are claiming that the charges against him are weak and that he does not deserve the life term awarded to him. He was tried under the law of the land. The trial went on for two years. It was a free and fair trial. He received the best possible legal aid. There is no dearth of resources or support for Sen to fight his case. This is a free society. And the trial was a legal process unlike what happens in the so-called kangaroo-“people’s court”-of the Maoists where without trial or legal aid innocent people are convicted to death and other inhuman punishments for defying the Maoist diktat.
Sen has a right to appeal in the High Court and then Supreme Court. He can get bail. His friends are openly questioning the judge and the judiciary, accusing the judge of bias and political predilections. This is outrageous. The Maoists are demanding special privileges which no other citizen in the country enjoys. They want to be above the law, that they don’t have any faith in the rule of law is another matter. They are talking of human rights which in their totalitarian concept they totally deny to others.
These people have a common identity. These are the same people who claim to occupy the middle ground, they claim to mediate for widening the space for dissent, they defend every terrorist, secessionist, separatist, and their common objective to shrink the Hindu majority space. Whenever one of them or those whom they claim to represent is hauled up under the law they make a boisterous hue and cry. They want to hold the state a hostage to their unreasonable demands. They have a loyal band in the media to echo their idea, playing up to the whims of anarchists, anti-nationals and separatists. They hog limelight, special mention and awards in the fashionable international circuit. Their mandate is to weaken the state, create disaffection in the pillars of democracy and try and make India a banana republic. See the manner in which the National Advisory Council(NAC), Sonia Gandhi’s handpicked men and women in the UPA government has reacted to the Raipur court verdict. Are they trying to intimidate and undermine the judiciary in the country? Or tell the world that the Indian legal system is not free and fair?
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