Letter to the Assam CM for the Immediate Release of Peasant Leader Akhil Gogoi

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Dear Mr. Chief Minister,

We the undersigned request you to order the immediate release of Akhil Gogoi-a peasant leader and RTI activist who has been in jail since December 2019. On December 12, 2019, he was taken into custody by police concerning the Citizenship Amendment Act protests. He has been kept jail continuously since then on one pretext or the other. Whenever the court grants him bail in one case, the agencies dig out some other case and get his custody extended. In this way, this chain of him being shifted from one jail to another and sheer mistreatment therein continues even though his health is deteriorating fast. He is also on an indefinite hunger strike at the Central Jail, Guwahati in protest against the primitive living conditions and inhuman treatment meted out to the inmates in the jail premises.

Akhil Gogoi is a leading peasant leader from the state of Assam. He is the founder and leader of Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS), a peasant rights organization functioning in Assam. KMSS has been a frontline organization in defending the rights of landless peasants, rural and urban poor. It campaigns to protect the lives and livelihoods of farmers, including those from indigenous Adivasi communities, by “securing land and forest rights, exposing corruption and opposing the construction of big dams that could forcibly displace peasants and threaten the lives of thousands and destruction of flora and fauna” says Amnesty International as reported in the Times of India.

Akhil Gogoi is also a renowned RTI activist in the country. In 2008, he was awarded the Shanmugam Manjunath Integrity Award for his relentless fight against corruption. He has been honored with the National Right to Information Award by Public Cause Research Foundation in 2010 for his role in exposing a 12.5 million scam in Sampoorna Gram Rozgar Yojna in the Golaghat district of Assam. In 2014 Akhil initiated a campaign against the land Mafia that had appropriated thousands of acres of agricultural land in the rural Kamrup district of Assam. 

Unfortunately, this crusader of peasant’s rights and RTI is being continuously harassed and mistreated by the state and its agencies on one pretext or other. He has been falsely labeled as Maoist & Naxalite and booked under the draconian Unlawful Activities Prevention Act and other provisions of the Indian Penal Code, that include but is not limited to sedition (section 124 A), the punishment of criminal conspiracy (section 120 B), unlawful association (section 153 A) and imputations, & assertions prejudicial to national-integration (section 153 B).

According to a report of the Northeast, the FIR lodged by the NIA alleges that Mr. Gogoi, through his visible representation and spoken words has abetted, incited hatred, and caused disaffection towards the government. This is blatantly false because Akhil fights for the rights of the marginalized & oppressed classes and in no way has ever excited any disaffection against any government established by law in Assam or in India.

Furthermore, this was not the first time Gogoi has charged been arrested under such draconian laws. In 2017, the government of Assam had him arrested and charged under various provisions of the National Security Act, 1980 that allows authorities to detain a person up to 12 months. Thankfully, the honorable Guwahati High Court had intervened and ordered his immediate release by holding that the detention violated his fundamental rights under Article 22 (5) of the constitution. Amnesty International reports that so far over 100 criminal cases have been registered against Akhil. 

Akhil got arrested again in December 2019 in relation to the anti-CAA protests. He was arrested from Jorhat on December  12, 2019, and on December 13, Guwahati police registered a suo moto case against him under various criminal provisions. It subsequently handed over this case to NIA on December 14 and Akhil was booked under the stringent provisions of the infamous Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA). The special NIA court, however, granted him bail on March 17 after the investigating agency failed to file a charge sheet within the stipulated 90 days. But the NIA filed a criminal appeal before the Gauhati High Court against this bail. The Gauhati High Court, thereafter, stayed the bail.

Subsequently, the NIA filed the charge sheet before the Special Judge, NIA, which resulted in his custody getting extended. This charge sheet rests overwhelmingly on several books on communist ideology like the Communist Manifesto, Lenin’s Selected Works in English, and a book on Mao Zedong, allegedly seized by the NIA from his home as reported by the Deccan Herald. It is indeed farcical to impute such grave charges and Maoist links based on the discovery of such books from one’s home. Moreover, these books are not even banned by the government and even if banned, reading them in and of itself does not constitute any crime. The same has been held by the supreme court on numerous occasions including in the famous Meesha bookcase. 

Akhil has been behind bars for the last seven months as he is detained under one charge after another despite being granted bail in every case. It is to deny him and the other arrested human rights activists a fair trial that they are continuously being charged under draconian provisions like UAPA that preclude the possibility of bail. This not only militates against the established constitutional principles but also the value system and vision of the founding fathers of this ancient nation.

These sham accusations and trials just to keep the activists under incarceration flies in the face of several leading supreme court judgments wherein the apex court has held that arrest could not be made by police in a routine manner. In Lalita Kumari, the SC held that the police are not liable to launch an investigation in every FIR. Only if there is sufficient cause to believe that a cognizable offense was committed, the police can proceed to investigate. It held further that while registration of FIR under Section 154 of the CrPC is mandatory, the arrest of the accused is not mandatory. Despite such lofty pronouncements, the state and its instrumentalities including police are still using arrest as a major tool of harassment of their critiques. This is certainly not the characteristics of the Swaraj that Gandhi and other freedom fighters dreamt of.

These actions are also a reflection of the current political climate in India, in which the harassment and arbitrary arrests of activists have become commonplace and even basic civil liberties are under threat. The state seems to relish in oppressing the poor and weak and the judiciary remains a mute spectator. In the words of justice Muralidhar, the Constitution requires the judge at all levels to be able to discern the weak from the strong litigant in terms of their capacities to access justice and lean on the side of the vulnerable in order to attempt to achieve equality of arms.

However, in the current political situation, the strongest litigant in the form of the State is openly bullying the weakest by arbitrarily incarcerating them against all the established principles of the rule of law and natural justice. Whereas the father of the nation enjoined upon the Indian State to strive to bestow freedom and Swaraj to the poorest and weakest, the current dispensation is doing the opposite. It is not only depriving them of their freedom and liberty but also harassing those who raise voices against it by arresting them arbitrarily and throwing them in dark and filthy dungeons.

In the present case, too, Akhil has been kept in an undignified facility at the Central Jail, Guwahati just because he raised his voice for the poor and oppressed. He is being treated like a criminal even though he is only an accused and charges against him are weak and inconclusive. Akhil and three of his associates have gone on indefinite fast at the Central Jail, Guwahati in protest against primitive living conditions inside the jail and inhuman treatment of inmates therein. Poor inedible food, unhygienic housing, and bedding, awful toilets, terrible congestion that turns social distancing into a farce, scornful neglect of illnesses suffered by inmates turn the prison into hell. This is in complete disregard for not only the prison management rules and jail manuals but also militates against Human Rights.

Now in this time of COVID pandemic, his continued imprisonment and that too in such an inhumane condition are even more unconscionable. So much so that even the UN and Human rights watchdogs have taken this matter into cognizance and have appealed to the government to release him and other activists. The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) has exhorted India to immediately release Akhil and other activists. “Keeping him behind bars for raising his voice for the people of Assam is a conspiracy of the government to kill him at a time when the world is battling the deadly novel coronavirus,” his mother Priyada Gogoi told journalists from her residence at Selenghat in Assam. Socialist Party (India) demands that Akhil Gogoi and other political prisoners be released immediately and dropping of all malicious charges against them.

Thank You
Yours Sincerely

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