The 'Gandhian' as a 'Maoist': Journalist Prafulla Jha fights back his sedition charges
For more than five years now, Prafulla Jha has been in Raipur jail. Fifteen months to go for the end of his term, the man whose arrest, along with seven others, had been termed by the Chhattisgarh Police as its "biggest success in cracking the urban network of Maoists", has challenged his conviction in the high court.
The court didn't rule him a Maoist, nor did it find that he was a member of any banned outfit. His interrogation report called him "a Gandhian who would never resort to or support violence". Still, in July 2013, Jha became the first Chhattisgarh journalist to be convicted on charges of sedition and of attempt to wage a war against the nation.
The recent arrest of alleged Maoist couriers Hem Mishra, a student of Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University, and Prashant Rahi, an Uttarakhand activist, from Gadchiroli, and the raid on the house of Delhi University professor G N Saibaba in the Capital have brought the urban network of Maoists back in focus. But while the security forces may assert that the instances confirm rebel operations in cities, Jha's case underlines that the charges rest on little more than presumptions.
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In the Raipur office of Dainik Bhaskar in the mid-1990s, Prafulla Jha, a self-proclaimed "Gandhian journalist", were sometimes seen translating papers his colleagues thought was 'Maoist literature'. Among the friends with whom he discussed political economy was a young lawyer, Vijay Reddy alias K R Reddy, later known as Gudsa Usendi or the spokesperson of the Dandakaranya Special Zonal Committee of the CPI (Maoist). Belonging to Karimnagar in Andhra Pradesh, Reddy lived with his family in Bhilai, a mofussil town of then undivided Madhya Pradesh.
In December 2007, Reddy disappeared. The arrests happened the following month.
On January 21, 2008, according to the police, Jha's transporter son Prateik and Reddy's wife Shanti Priya alias Malti dropped seven bags of weapons and Maoist literature, including a short story collection, Premchand ki Sarvshreshtha Kahaniyan (by the legendary Hindi author), on a road in Raipur "for some unknown Maoists". The next day, Malti and her friend Meena Chaudhary were arrested, and at their instance, Jha was held. A bag containing weapons and other material was recovered from Jha's home. Prateik and his friend Siddharth Sharma, both travel agents, were arrested days later on the charge of transporting weapons and other material for Maoists. On the basis of Malti's account, Bilaspur-based cloth merchants Naresh and Ramesh Khubnani and Raipur-based tailor Dayaram Sahu were also arrested.
Four years later, in April 2012, Malti and Chaudhary were among those whose release was sought by the Maoists for releasing abducted Sukma Collector Alex Paul Menon.
This July, a Raipur court held all the eight guilty of supporting Maoists, with the local media reporting the case as "hardcore Naxals convicted". What didn't get highlighted was that the court did not term any of them a Maoist, even rejecting the prosecution's contention that they were members of a banned outfit....
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Jha has a large family of four daughters and three sons. Three daughters are still unmarried. One is in Class XII, and the others work to help meet family expenses. One of his daughters, Priya, had to give up her PhD. The family doesn't deny links to activists, many of whom now stand tarnished in Chhattisgarh's Naxal war. Says Priya: "Binayak (Sen) uncle aur Niyogi (prominent activist Shankar Guha Niyogi) uncle ki goud mein kheli hoon. Protests were routine for us."
They believe their father was framed as he was very vocal in TV debates on civil liberties. "Several journalists came to us. After his arrest, we requested them to take up our case. But none of them wrote on him," Priya says. Jha believes his supporters feared police action. Under attack over the Salwa Judum, the Chhattisgarh Police was making major arrests at the time, including of Binayak Sen. "What I did was not unique. Several journalists were also engaged in similar debates," Jha says. While Sen and Soni Sori, also arrested from Chhattisgarh in Naxal cases, were termed 'Prisoners of Conscience' by Amnesty International and campaigns launched for their release, no one come forward for Jha, Sahu or the Khubnani brothers.
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A postgradute in anthropology, Jha is acknowledged to have done major research during his academic career. His colleagues remember him as a sharp intellectual, vocal and argumentative. Except a few years when he worked as an editorial writer for newspapers such as Bhaskar and Hitvada, he worked mostly as a freelance journalist. However, Jha was also a committed activist and got involved with the Chhattisgarh Bachao Andolan and the People's Union for Civil Liberties a long time ago. His activism coincided with the emergence of Naxals in southern Madhya Pradesh. Cadres of the People's War Group entered Bastar in the 1980s, gradually expanded their base among tribals and marched northwards.
Reddy was among the topmost PWG men entrusted with the task of spearheading the urban Naxal movement in Chhattisgarh. He arrived in late 1980s, studied law at Raipur University, befriended several journalists and began living in Bhilai with wife Malti, a son and a daughter. Reddy's interviews and articles featured in Chhattisgarh papers and news channels.
The term 'urban network of Maoists' was yet to gain currency, and rebels allowed journalists easy access to their Bastar camps. After Reddy's disappearance and Malti's arrest, their children shifted to Hyderabad and claim not to have met their father since his disappearance or to have known of their parents' "links".
While the association with Reddy could hurt his case, Jha does not deny their friendship. "I met Reddy in October 1988. He was a brilliant law student and circulated Maoist literature," he says. Jha also claims that while Reddy "managed" visits of several journalists to "Bastar camps", he never went. Jha's investigation report corroborates that while Reddy often insisted, Jha never visited Maoist zones. Jha believes he was still arrested as police wanted a face to instill fear among the media. "I was a freelancer. They could easily lay hands on me."...
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