“We don’t want to be forced out of our traditional lands. These lands have been being tilled by us for generations and we should be accorded all rights to them under the Forest Rights Act,” said Dinesh Habale of the Adivasi Hakk Savardhan Samiti. The region is currently under threat due to the construction of the proposed carshed for Mumbai Metro. The land has also been long coveted by the builder lobby.

The Adivasis of Aarey were joined by fellow Adivasis from all over the city, Palghar and many environmentalists. Those present at the protest spoke about how despite being “Moolniwasis” or original residents they still had to ask for permission for facilities in their own lands. Many also spoke of the unbreakable bond they had with the forests, their preservation and how Adivasis can’t exist without them.

“The land is traditionally ours, yet we are treated like encroachers,” said  Shashi Sonawane of Bhoomiputra Bachao Andolan from Palghar. “The Adivasis are the traditional preservers of the forests and we stand with them in their demand for the implementation of the Forest Rights Act,” said Amrita Bhattacharjee of the Aarey Conservation Group.

CJP has long been associated with the nationwide movement for the implementation of the Forest Rights Act 2006 that grants Adivasis and forest workers rights to forest land and produce. Click here to learn more about our campaign.
 

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Image Courtesy: ANI

The demonstration was led by Dr Tadvi’s mother Abeda and husband Dr Salman. Demanding justice and raising graver questions about the institutional murder of his wife Dr Salman told India Today, “We want the government to intervene. The police are not taking any action. It is possible that Payal was murdered by the three women doctors.”
The protest saw a huge participation from students, especially those who come from Dalit, Bahujan and Adivasi backgrounds. Several Adivasi rights organisations were also present at the protest.

Brief background of the case:
On May 22, Dr Payal Tadvi, a 23 year old doctor hailing from a tribal community in Jalgaon allegedly committed suicide at her hostel in Mumbai’s prestigious Nair Hospital after being allegedly harassed by three seniors who would use casteist slurs against her. According to friends and colleagues, three senior doctors harassed Tadvi and used casteist slurs while addressing her and even mocked her on Whatsapp groups. They have been identified as Hema Ahuja, Bhakti Mehar and Ankita Khandelwal. 

Even after repeated complaints, the hospital administration failed to take action against the perpetrators. This makes it a case of institutional murder, not unlike that of Hyderabad University student Rohith Vemula. 

Action taken:
An FIR has been registered against them under sections of the Prevention of Atrocities against SC/ST Act, IT Act, as well as section 306 of the IPC. The Maharashtra Association of Resident Doctors (MARD) has also suspended the trio’s registration. Gynaecology unit head Dr. Yi Chin Ling has also been suspended.

Even as the protests took place on Tuesday, the BMC followed in the MARD’s footsteps and suspended the licenses of the accused pending an inquiry. The Maharashtra State Commission for Women has also taken suo mostu cognizance of the case and written to the dean of the hospital demanding a report be submitted in eight days detailing anti-ragging measures and communication between the administration and students.

Meanwhile, a 21 member anti-ragging panel has taken statements of nearly 30 people in connection with the case. These include doctors, professors, nurses and other staff. The panel includes representatives from MARD, college administration and the police. Dr. Ramesh BHarmal, dean of the hospital told The Hindu, “Nearly 30 people, including the unit in charge, head of the department, nurses from the operation theatres, lab technician, and her roommates were questioned.”

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According to the Indian Express, the two controversial bills couldn’t be passed by the Rajya Sabha in the Budget session, the last Parliament session of the outgoing government. The term of the present Lok Sabha was to end on June 3, but with the election process over, President Ram Nath Kovind dissolved the lower house on Saturday.

Both the bills were opposed by the non-BJP parties in the Rajya Sabha, where the then Narendra Modi-led BJP government lacked majority.

The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2019 provided for according Indian citizenship to Hindus, Jains, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Parsis from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan, who came to India before December 31, 2014, after seven years of residence in India instead of 12 years, which is the current norm, even if they do not possess any document. The critics alleged that this bill was another tactic by the right-wing Hindutva party, BJP, to further other the Muslims and move towards its goal of a ‘Hindu rashtra’.

This bill was also strongly opposed by Assam and other northeastern states on the grounds that an easy entry of Hindus from the neighbouring nations would destroy their cultural hegemony. They even claimed that this bill was against the Assam Accord, 1985, as per which any foreigner (from Bangladesh or elsewhere) – Hindu or Muslim – who entered the state after March 24, 1971, would have to be detected and deported to their country of origin.

This controversial legislation was passed by the Lok Sabha during the Winter Session on January 8 but could not be cleared by the upper house.

Even the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) bill, which made the practice of instant triple talaq (talaq-e-bidat) a cognizable offence, attracting up to three years imprisonment with a fine, was challenged by the opposition parties on the grounds that criminalization of the act of divorce with a jail term for the husband could be legally untenable. Some critics and activists even raised apprehensions that if the husband is put behind the bars, the wife would be left helpless with no source of maintenance. Some other sections demanded the decriminalization of triple talaq by making it only a civil offence and in line with the way divorce is dealt with in general in India.

An ordinance for this was issued in September 2018 and later a bill was introduced which was cleared by the Lok Sabha in December but was pending in Rajya Sabha. Since the Bill could not get parliamentary approval, a fresh ordinance was issued in January, 2019.

With an unexpected landslide victory of the BJP government in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, there is a high probability that these two bills will be taken up as soon as the first session of the 17th Lok Sabha commences. Until then, the lapse can be a much needed relief!

Related Articles:

1. Why India’s new citizenship law is so controversial – and why some regions are angrier than others
2. Religious freedom conditions in India on a downward trend in 2018: US Commission on International Religious Freedom
3. What India Needs is More Gender Just Laws, Including Personal Laws, for Its Women

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As reported by NDTV,  the couple had taken their son, Afroz, to a local hospital after he was diagnosed with high fever. The doctors advised them to take Afroz to Lucknow for better treatment, after which they requested for an ambulance. However, they were reportedly not provided with an ambulance, neither did they have any money. Helpless, the couple began walking, carrying their child, and he allegedly passed away while they were on the way home.

“We took our child to the hospital in the morning. The doctors told us to take him elsewhere for treatment. We asked them for a vehicle but they refused. There were three ambulances parked in the premises. I do not know why we were denied one,” the father alleged.

Predictably, the doctors have rebuffed the allegations.  The emergency medical officer, Anurag Parashar, said, “A child named Afroz came to the hospital at 8:10 pm. His condition was not well, so we directed the parents to take him to Lucknow for special treatment. They scoffed saying they will take him wherever they wish and left with the kid.”

While the allegations have not yet been proved, there is certainly an urgent need for a thorough investigation. It is also crucial to probe whether there is some communal angle associated with this untoward incident.

Related Articles:

1. A Field Report From 13 Sites Of Hate Crime In Uttar Pradesh: Lingering Fear, Distrust, Justice Delayed, Denied
2. Why 200 Ordinary Hindus Did Not See A Dead Muslim Child On A Railway Station In North India
3. Niti Aayog, Health Ministry propose outsourcing of urban health care: Scroll

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In a tweet Kumar, who recently contested parliamentary elections from Begusarai reminded everyone of the Rohith Vemula case and said that a nationwide movement was needed to root out casteism.

Dr Tadvi had completed her MBBS and was pursuing second year post graduate studies in the field of gynaecology. Her mother, Abeda Tadvi told News18, “I spoke to her around 4pm that day and she told me that she was being mentally tortured. She had complained to me earlier as well and I had requested the lecturers to address the issue but they ignored it. I also tried to meet the dean, but I was not allowed. I want justice for my daughter.” Dr Tadvi’s mother visited the hospital for her ongoing treatment for cancer and had filed a formal complaint in December 2018 and again on May 10, 2019. Abeda also says that Dr Tadvi was mocked on Whatsapp groups. The young doctor was reportedly told that she would never be allowed into operation theatres or allowed to perform deliveries.

Even Dr Tadvi’s husband Dr Salman had complained to the administration about Payal’s harassment, but very little changed. He told News18, “She first complained about the harassment in December. I met head of the department Dr Shirodkar. After this, Payal’s unit was changed for two months, but when she returned to the same unit after two months, the harassment continued.” Dr Salman further explained to The Hindu, “When she came to Nair Hospital for her postgraduation, she was asked to temporarily share a room with Dr. Hema Ahuja and Dr. Bhakti Mehar. The two began harassing her soon.” He added, “The two doctors would go to the toilet and wipe their feet on her mattress and litter it. When she would be away, they would taunt her that she was spending time with her husband.”

According to friends and colleagues, three senior doctors harassed Tadvi and used casteist slurs while addressing her and even mocked her on Whatsapp groups. They have been identified as Hema Ahuja, Bhakti Mehar and Ankita Khandelwal. An FIR has been registered against them under sections of the Prevention of Atrocities against SC/ST Act, IT Act, as well as section 306 of the IPC. The Maharashtra Association of Resident Doctors (MARD) has also suspended the trio’s registration.

However, the three accused have rubbished all allegations in a signed statement to the MARD. They claim ‘workload’ cannot be equated with ragging. “You all are aware of the workload in residency and do you all really believe burdened with the workload is ragging (sic)?” The accused feel that they have been wrongly targeted under media pressure and demand a thorough and unbiased inquiry,” reports Mumbai Mirror.

Meanwhile a protest march has been planned in Mumbai on May 28 to demand justice for Dr Tadvi and shed light on caste based oppression.

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It’s been a year since women’s right activist Loujain al-Hathloul was detained and jailed in Saudi Arabia for leading a movement to lift the kingdom’s ban on female drivers and overhaul its male “guardianship” system. Despite international outcry, she’s been imprisoned ever since. During that time, her family says, she’s been held in solitary confinement and faced abuse, including electric shocks, flogging and threats of sexual violence. The Saudi government has resisted calls from human rights groups and lawmakers from around the world to release Loujain and the other jailed activists.
 
Saud al-Qahtani, the infamous former adviser to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, visited Hathloul in detention to oversee her torture, according to Walid, her brother.
 
“He sat in on one of the sessions. He told her: ‘I’ll kill you, cut you into pieces, throw you in the sewer system. But before that, I’ll rape you,’” Walid said.
 
Hathloul remains more concerned about the fate of women outside the prison walls than herself, said her brother in a report by The Guardian.
 
“Even when she was in jail, although she didn’t witness women being allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia, she kept asking me how women there were feeling, whether they were enjoying their right to drive,” Walid said. “She was thinking about them even though she was in jail, and it wasn’t a time to think about others.
 
It’s not hard to guess why Hathloul is still behind bars. Her family, including brother Walid and sister Lina, have been outspoken on her behalf, including about the torture she says she endured: waterboarding, beatings, electric shocks and sexual harassment.

“They are saying, because you guys are speaking out, Loujain is not going to be released,” says Walid al-Hathloul. It’s a way of ensuring that other families remain silent about arrests and mistreatment of activists.
 
Thanks to such tactics, Saudi activists and human rights groups have been unable to determine how many political detentions have occurred since MBS came to power.
 
Including religious opponents of the regime and members of the royal family, the total could number in the thousands, says Safa al-Ahmad, a filmmaker who has documented Saudi repression in an article by The Washington Post.
 
According to accounts shared by her siblings, Loujain was kidnapped from the streets of Dubai by government officials, forced into an airplane and flown back to Saudi Arabia against her will. There she was held, first in an apartment in a secret location, later in a state prison.
 
“These are the things my brave, resilient sister has endured in prison,” Lina recently told an audience at the Women in the World’s New York summit. “She has been beaten until her thighs were black with bruises, subject to whippings and waterboarding, tormented with electric shocks, threatened with rape and murder.”
 
The refusal of her brothers and sisters to keep Loujain’s plight secret, as they had been instructed, make uncomfortable publicity for a nation working on an international media makeover.
 
“In the past year, Saudi Arabia has been rightfully proud of the leaps forward it has made in terms of women’s liberties; the first female ambassador has been appointed, women’s sport has lost its stigma and the infamous female driving ban has fallen. But what does all this mean, if the very people who campaigned peacefully for such rights are denied their own freedom?” Nicola Sutcliff, an international journalist, wrote.
 
There has been relief for some in the past few weeks; approximately seven of the jailed activists have been released ‘temporarily’ pending the results of their ongoing trials. But of Loujain in such headlines, there has been no sign.
 
The date of her last hearing was cancelled abruptly without explanation. Since then, there have been no updates on her case, and no news of when proceedings might be resumed.
 
Loujain has recently been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. At the time of her arrest she was training to work as a sociologist, “In the hope of taking part in the change that is happening in my country as a researcher and a consultant,” she told Sutcliff.
 

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“His name was in the final draft of NRC published last year but someone put an objection against him and he had to attend a hearing on May 23 in Rangia (about 100 km away). After the hearing, his biometrics were taken and that scared him because some people in the village told him that biometric details are taken from suspected foreigners whom police might put in a detention camp,” Fazlur Rehman, a family member, told Indian Express.

The family says that he was disturbed after attending the hearing and feared he would be dragged away to a detention camp. He also feared how his family’s citizenship status would now be questioned if his citizenship could not be proved.

It is noteworthy, that in May 2018, Prateek Hajela, the State Coordinator of the NRC, had directed all NRC officials to keep pending names of siblings and family members of declared foreigners from the NRC. The controversial order was upheld by the Gauhati High Court. In a version of ‘guilty by association’, it makes all family members of a declared foreigner vulnerable as their citizenship comes into question. Ali feared if he were to be declared foreigner, his entire family would suffer.

Independent journalist Rohini Mohan tweeted this heart rending thread about meeting Ali’s family at his funeral. She also tweeted this video of purple pesticide that a local reporter shot near where Ali’s body was found. But the local police have ruled out suicide saying no poison was recovered from the location where the body was found. However, a post mortem has been ordered.
 

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25 year old Mohammed Barkat Aalam had come to the city from his home in Begusarai in Bihar just 20 days ago. On Saturday, as he was returning from Sadar Bazar mosque in Jacobpura after offering prayers, he was accosted by six men, four on motor cycles and two on foot.

According to the FIR filed with the local police Aalam said, “The men on foot beat me and said you cannot wear a cap in this area… They had both consumed alcohol.” An FIR was filed under Section 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language etc, and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony), the FIR has been registered under sections 147 (rioting), 149 (unlawful assembly), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), and 506 (criminal intimidation).

Aalam further told Indian Express, “The two men told me, ‘remove your cap, it is not allowed here’. I asked them why, but they became aggressive and said ‘why are you wearing a kurta, that is now allowed, take it off’. When I did not do as they asked, one of the men threw my cap on the ground and abused me.”

Aalam asked bystanders for help and allegedly received none. Instead, seeing him resit their pressure, Aalam’s attackers then started pressurising him to chant jingoistic slogans. Aalam told Indian Express that the attacker said to him, “If you keep resisting, we will make you chant Jai Sri Ram and Bharat Mata Ki Jai’.” However, this part was allegedly left out of the FIR, though Aalam insists he told the police the entire story. Aalam also alleges that he was harassed by the police by first making him sit in the police station till 3:30 AM even though the incident took place at about 10:15 PM. He was also called to the police station the following day for an identification parade, but none took place and Aalam was only allowed to leave after Haji Shehzad Khan, chairman of the Muslim Ekta Manch intervened. Khan told Indian Express, that he felt that the police were mentally harassing Aalam.

However, the police deny editing out anything from Aalam’s statement. They also insist that they are trying to identify the accused.
 

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Ranchi: Jeetrai Hansda, a prominent tribal activist and professor at the Government School and College for Women, Sakchi, in Jharkhand was arrested on Saturday.
 
He was arrested almost two years after he wrote a Facebook post asserting his community’s right to eat beef on the basis of a complaint filed against him in June 2017 by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s student wing Akhil Bharati Vidyarthi Parishad.
 
The timing of the police action, two days after the declaration of the election results, has prompted questions whether the BJP-run administration in the state delayed the arrest to avoid an Adivasi backlash in the polls.
 
A lawyer from the team handling Hansda’s case told HuffPost India that he suspected the arrest was made after the elections were over so that the BJP did not anger the Adivasis and lose their votes before the polls. The BJP won 12 of the 14 Lok Sabha seats in Jharkhand this year, same as 2014. The government at the state is also led by the BJP under Raghubar Das.
 
A diary was filed against Hansda’s Facebook post in 2017 and after ‘investigating’ the complaint, inspector Anil Kumar Singh of Sakchi police station lodged the FIR. Hansda’s lawyer said that though he was asked to appear in the police station, he wasn’t arrested back then. He was only arrested yesterday and continues to be in police custody. Hansda had also moved for anticipatory bail, which was rejected.
 
Hansda is a prominent Adivasi activist and theatre artist and his Facebook post asserted his community’s right to eat beef.
 
The FIR lodged at the Sakchi police station in Jamshedpur, stated that Hansda had written a Facebook post asserting that the Adivasi community in India has had a long tradition of eating beef and ceremonial cow sacrifice. It is their democratic and cultural right to consume the meat, he said. The post also said that they oppose India’s laws on eating beef and that his community also consumes peacocks, the country’s national bird. He also expressed his unwillingness to follow Hindu customs.
 
Hansda’s lawyer said that he had been asked to appear at the police station in 2017 but was not arrested. The professor’s application for anticipatory bail was also rejected. According to HuffPost India, Hansda has been charged with sections of the Indian Penal Code that deal with insults to religious feelings and attempts to promote enmity between groups of people.
 
Meanwhile, the leader of an organisation that works for the preservation of Adivasi traditions said that in 2017 he had urged the vice chancellor of Kolhan University, which runs the government college in Sakchi, not to expel the professor.

Dasmath Hansdah, the chief of the Majhi Pargana Mahal, had written to the vice-chancellor, saying there were no inaccuracies in Hansda’s post, and called the assertions made by him a “truthful representation of the cultural and religious traditions of the Adivasi community and their culinary legacies”.
 
The letter also said, “Adivasis are citizens of India as well. We have a democratic right to follow our cultural and religious traditions like everybody else… If the Central government brings in a law banning cow slaughter, it will end our traditions and religious beliefs”.
 
Though it is not clear if the university suspended Hansda, “he stopped going to college”, Dasmath Hansdah told HuffPost India.
 
Hansda was booked under sections 153 (A), 295A, 505 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) for insulting religious feelings and attempts to promote enmity between groups of people.
 
 

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