Piyasree Dasgupta - BJP Govt Went To Crazy Lengths To Punish A Student For A Facebook Post
NB: Readers who scroll down this report will find this:“My sister grabbed
another police and asked them to stop his colleague,” he said. The police
responded by also charging Thokchom with obstructing a public servant on
duty. On their way to the Janakpuri police station, where Thokchom was
kept in a lock-up for two days, the Delhi Police personnel asked what he
intended to do in future. When Veewon said he had applied for PhD, they
immediately asked, “So you will go to JNU? Or Aligarh Muslim
University?” “It was sort of amusing. I said I had applied to JNU yes,”
Veewon said.
What business is it of
the police to make these kinds of assaults and remarks whilst raiding the
premises of a completely guiltless person? After the manner in which the RSS organisations have treated Kashmiri students in Uttarakhand, this report shows that far from being concerned about national unity, this gang of communal thugs who could best be named Sangh Lafang have devoted themselves to destroying even the simplest trust in human decency necessary for ordinary life.
All those who think the RSS ideology represents 'patriotism' may kindly think about this: if you treat Indian citizens from outside the "Hindi heartland" with such contempt, by what right do you want them to belong to the Union of India? Shame on the BJP/RSS and shame on the Janakpuri police. Be warned - you are breaking up the country, regardless of how loudly you shout Bharat Mata. DS
Thokchom, it turned
out, had been charged with sedition after the Manipur police spotted a Facebook post in
which he criticised the Citizenship
Amendment Bill — the Bharatiya Janta Party’s controversial
bill that upends the existing conception of Indian citizenship by offering
Indian citizenship to so-called persecuted minorities of all religions
except Islam. The bill has sparked
protests all over the North East, and has pushed the BJP’s alliance partner in
Assam to walk out of the government. In his post, Thokchom
wrote, “Indefinite curfew imposed in Manipur. Internet banned for 5 days. All
cable TV network asked not to cover any speech or footage of the protest. High
possibility that CAB will be passed today at the Rajya Sabha. Manipur
once burned down the state assembly in 2001. Self determination the only way
forward.”
Thokchom’s arrest,
activists say, shows how the BJP-led state government in Manipur seeking to
please their overlords in Delhi by aggressively clamping down on those
protesting the policies of the Modi-led BJP government in
the centre. He has become the latest in the line of dozens of people - from
auto-rickshaw drivers to serving policemen - who have been slapped with
‘sedition’ cases for social media posts critical of the BJP, the government at
the centre or Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Further, Thokchom’s
arrest is particularly worrying at a time when the Union government is seeking
to build specialised tools to monitor all social media posts of citizens.
Thokchom, who is a
former President of the Manipur Students Union told HuffPost India that despite
his arrest, he stands by his post and has hence not deleted it from his
profile... read more
