Free Arun Ferreira: Petition Signed by 94 Academics, Social Activists, Students and Concerned Citizens

Dear Mr. Prime Minister,

We the undersigned demand the immediate release of Arun Ferreira – a civil rights activist and human rights lawyer who has been behind bars since June 6, 2018, when he was arrested in connection to the Bhima Koregaon event held earlier that year. Like many other activists, he was slapped with UAPA and other anti-terror related offenses allegedly for inciting the ensuing violence that police claimed was calculated to disturb public peace. 

Ferreira has spent years in jail on similar charges previously as well. He was first arrested in 2007, for an alleged conspiracy to blow up the Deekshabhoomi in Nagpur, the site where the Dalit leader Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar converted to Buddhism in October 1956 along with more than 300,000 of his followers. Ferreira later said that Police concocted this story to drive a wedge between Dalits and Naxalites. 

During the trial, the prosecution could not prove any of these grave allegations in court. He was finally declared innocent and acquitted of all charges in 2014. Needless to say, this acquittal was too little to compensate him for the four tormenting years he spent in jail and the brutal custodial torture that he underwent therein. 

Referring to such cases, human rights defenders point towards the inefficiency of the Indian legal system. They claim that such lengthy trials in and of itself are akin to punishment, even if the accusations are eventually dismissed years later. Moreover, the officials are rarely held accountable for their excesses as arrests made by the state are often presumed to be in good faith.

While recounting one of his prison experiences in an article, Ferreira says that they stretched out his body completely, using an updated version of the medieval torture technique of drawing. His arms were tied to a window grill high above the ground while two policemen stood on his outstretched thighs to keep him pinned to the floor.

Later, Ferreira also wrote a book titled ‘Colors of the Cage’ on his nerve-racking torture and suffering inside the prison. In the words of Arundhati Roy, this book provides “a clear-eyed, unsentimental account of custodial torture, years of imprisonment on false cases and flagrant violation of rule of law. His experience is shared by tens of thousands of our fellow countrymen and women most of whom do not have access to lawyers or legal aid”. Due to the political nature of his work Ferreira has always been an easy target of hostile right-wing governments for many years. 

Ferreira is said to have had a humble upbringing. According to India Civil Watch, during his college days, he began exploring strong connections between poverty and lack of social justice. As a student, he passionately assisted blind children and orphans. And after graduating, he worked for the well-being of slum-dwellers and squatters of Mumbai, where he played a constructive role in the relocation of slums from Colaba to Goregaon in Mumbai.

After his acquittal and release in 2012, Ferreira became a budding lawyer and worked closely with other legal professionals of the country to secure the release of other political prisoners arrested on trumped-up charges. Sadly, he too became a victim of similar charges in June 2018, when he was arrested for facilitating the Bhima Koregaon anti-Dalit violence. He has been in jail since then. Nonetheless, his resolve to fight against state oppression has only become stronger despite being tortured and abused in prison on numerous occasions, says Ferreira. 

We the undersigned demand the dropping of all charges against Arun Ferreira and his immediate release.

Thank You

Yours Sincerely,

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