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Statement Against the Torture and Politically Motivated Arrest of Soni Sori |
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International Alliance for the Defense of Human Rights in India Nov 16, 2011: We, the International Alliance for the Defense of Human Rights in India (IADHRI), strongly condemn the wrongful arrest of and the subsequent torture of Soni Sori, an adivasi (indigenous) school teacher from Dantewada, Chattisgarh. On October 20th, 2011, the Supreme Court of India ordered the government of Chhattisgarh to send Sori to a hospital in Kolkata in the neighboring state of West Bengal for independent medical examination, after credible reports surfaced of her torture and mistreatment by the Chhattisgarh police [1]. The medical examination reports sent by the hospital did not reach the Court by Nov 15th as ordered. The Court has again ordered the reports to be sent by the 17th. Sori has been sent back to a prison in Chhattisgarh where there is grave danger of continued torture and a threat to her life. Soni Sori is the aunt of Lingaram Kodopi, a young journalist who was arrested on September 9th on charges of collecting money for the Maoists. She is also the mother of three young children, aged 6, 10 and 12 years, now in the care of her brother, Ramdev, with her husband already imprisoned in Chhattisgarh on false charges. Sori fled the state fearing for her life and reached New Delhi seeking legal assistance. She was arrested on October 4th by the Delhi police acting under the directions of the Chhattisgarh police. The police allege that Sori is involved in the same case, and have also charged her in several other cases. An examination of publicly available materials demonstrates that the charges against both of them are false and politically motivated [2,3,4,5]. Amnesty International has declared both Sori and Lingaram Kodopi prisoners of conscience and has demanded that the charges against them be dropped and that they be freed unconditionally [6. See also 7.]. In response to petitions filed in courts in Delhi, a judge ordered the Chhattisgarh police on October 7th to take all measures to ensure Soni Sori’s safety in transit. Produced before a court in Dantewada the next day, a Saturday, a judge granted police custody of Sori, but ordered that she be medically examined prior to taking custody of her and before being produced before the court the following Monday [8]. However, the police failed to produce Sori before the court on Monday, claiming she had suffered serious injuries falling down in the prison bathroom and had to be admitted to a hospital. A video captured by a reporter in the hospital showed her writhing in severe pain on a hospital bed [9]. A medical examination conducted by doctors in the hospital showed “contusions” on her head and “tenderness in her lumbar region,” likely to have been caused by “a hard and blunt object,” but observed that there were no visual signs of “bony fractures [10].” The medical report also noted black marks on both her middle fingers. We suspect these marks were caused by the administration of electric shocks by the police. The police took her to hospitals in Jagdalpur and Raipur later in the week. The medical reports from these hospitals noted that X-Ray and CAT scans showed no fractures, in line with observations previously made by the doctors in Dantewada after visual inspection, but the reports remained silent on the other observations. Soni Sori claimed initially, in the presence of the police, that her injuries were caused by a fall in the bathroom, but in a subsequent letter and in conversations with relatives, she wrote that she had been tortured by the police [11]. She stated in the letter that the most senior police official in the district, Ankit Garg, was directly involved in her torture. It was in response to this sequence of events that activists [12] and lawyers filed a petition in the Supreme Court of India demanding an independent medical examination [13]. The Government of Chhattisgarh denied that Sori had been tortured, but the Supreme Court granted the petition on grounds that "the injuries sustained by [Soni Sori] do not prima facie appear to be as simple as has been made out to be by the Chhattisgarh police." Though Soni Sori has now been independently medically examined in Kolkata and we await the medical report to be presented to the Supreme Court, we fear that serious harm could be done to Soni Sori while she is in Chhattisgarh. Intimidation of her family continues: on November 15, around 25 policemen arrived at Sori’s father’s house, in search of her brother, Ramdev. Sori had earlier told relatives that the police had threatened to arrest Ramdev, the sole caretaker of her three children, should she disclose that she had been tortured. The Chhattisgarh police has a long record of committing human rights abuses and atrocities outside and inside prisons, documented by human rights organizations in India, including PUCL and PUDR as well as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch [14,15, 16]. The Indian Supreme Court, an institution for which we have the utmost respect, has also strongly condemned the abuses committed by the police and the vigilante forces organized, armed and funded by the state and national governments [17]. However, the Government of Chhattisgarh, with the support of the Government of India, has repeatedly failed to honor the orders of the Supreme Court of India [18, 19, 20]. We demand that
International Alliance for the Defense of Human Rights in India References:
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