We wanted to meet those wonderful people who have been confronting imperialism and its stooges at home with their empty hands. We wanted to learn about their courage to stand before thousands of guns. We began our journey from different states with a wish to visit those people among whom six thousand of them have been implicated by the state under a draconian law just for asking for their right to life. We thought, this is unprecedented in the history of ‘independent’ India. We simply wanted to know the facts. Along with ten other activists from various people’s organisations of different states, I proceeded to Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu on 12 October 2012.
The other members in our team are: Hamid, Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee, Dastagiri, Rayalaseema Students Forum, Pratima Das, advocate from Odisha High Court, Aravind Avinash and Damodar, PUCL-Jharkhand, Priyadarshini, a research scholar from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, Agaradi, Women Uprising Movement, Madurai, Kesevan, Joint Secretary, CPCL and advocate, Jagan, Student Uprising Movement, Madurai and Palanisamy, Anti-imperialist Movement, Karoor, Tamil Nadu.
The people’s struggle against Atomic Power plant in Kudankulam has twenty three years of history. The struggle had begun when the Indo-Russian Agreement in 1989 was signed. The people of this region had shown their fury against this plant since the early days of its conceptualisation. Finally, the plant has come up trampling down the people’s resistance, but became a major question particularly after Fukushima disaster. A meeting on what precautions should be taken if such a disaster happens in the post-Fukushima raised the local people’s suspicion further. Since then, the consciousness of the people in the villages around the plant has had enhanced on nuclear power and embraced to a wide variety of forms of struggles against the plant. The Tamil Nadu government implicated six thousand villagers around the plant in conspiracy cases for their peaceful protests. Hundreds of them have been incarcerated in different prisons of Tamil Nadu.
Their movement has attracted the attention of the people all over the country and the world. The people of Kudankulam made the nuclear energy a major controversial issue in this country in the wake of Nuclear Agreement of the present ruling regime with the US. Many political parties and people’s organisations in the country declared their support to the struggle against Kudankulam Nuclear Plant. But the Union and Tamil Nadu governments have taken the production of nuclear energy by this plant as a prestigious issue. Imposed section 144 and have been preventing people to assemble in and around Kudankulam. On 12 October, our fact-finding team was stopped 40 km away from Kudankulam by the police. The police personnel tore into the public transport bus in which we were travelling and dragged us out before the clueless passengers as if they were making a major arrest.
Instantly, they snatched away our cell phones. We were rushed to and detained in a wedding hall (Kalyan Mantapam) in Nanganeri while a hundred armed police men stood ‘guard’ to the 11 member fact finding team around the hall deliberately to create an atmosphere of terror. Without showing us any search warrants our bags were explored to the inch. When we questioned their illegal acts, we were told crudely that the area surrounding Kudankulam has been under section144 of CrPC and no one can enter it. They told us that the detention was a preventive one. They also informed us that they would free us by evening if we agree to go back and not insist on going to Kudankulam. But by 10.30 in the night, we were booked under the sections of CRPC 143, 188, 294B, 352, 353, 506-1 read along with 7(1) and produced before the magistrate of Nanganeri.
The police prevented the advocates to meet us till that night and produced us before the magistrate only after they managed to frame us under non-bailable offences. Then after, we were moved to a sub-jail. On Monday, after the bail petition was deferred to be heard on the next day, we were moved to the Central Jail in Tiruchi. By then, the police agencies have started public trial of us in the media by planting imaginary stories as dangerous men and women caught in a Tamil Nadu police net. The police disobeyed the magistrate’s orders and carried us away crossing two districts and lodged us in the Tiruchi Central Jail showing some strange technical issues. They wanted to delay our release at least by a few days. This is the least of a lesson to be taught to all those who oppose Nuclear power in the post-123 Agreement.
They branded us as Maoists. I have been blamed as a person who came down to Tamil Nadu to expand Maoist Party. The media has readily bought this news as premium one at least in the state. They have gone to the extent of doctoring my face book photo (which was taken in the recent conference of Revolutionary Writers’ Association for which I am the secretary) and concocted a story. The sensation driven media has stooped to the appalling levels as they audaciously propagated that I who is unmarried, as wife of a Maoist leader, without any attempt to verify facts. The Tamil Nadu media resorted to propagate falsehood to sensationalise our fact-finding mission. The reality or the facts can be only obscured by the designs of the powers-that-be to sell Nuclear Energy as sustainable source though it has the potential to wipe out the human species from the Earth.
The effects of this vicious media trial branding us as Maoists was evident as the court which examined our truly false case got influenced and granted only a conditional bail. All democrats and democratic media should unequivocally condemn this fascist repressive act of the state. We should demand and put pressure on the governments to lift all cases fabricated on thousands of Kudankulam people who have been fighting to stop and dump the anti-people Nuclear Plant. And last but not the least we should demand the immediate withdrawal of the forces deployed there who have become as dangerous to the life of the people in Kudankulam as the nuclear plant!
Varalakshmi
Secretary, Revolutionary Writers’ Association, Andhra Pradesh
October 2012
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