Activists are increasingly coming under attack as they campaign to protect the environment.
The most recent example has been the case of Ramesh Agrawal who heads the environment NGO Jan Chetna and Dr Harihar Patel, a practitioner of indigenous medicine in Chhattisgarh. Both of them had been raising public awareness about the environmental and health fall-outs of a proposed expansion of the coal-fired thermal power plant run in Raigarh district by Jindal Steel and Power.
Both Mr Patel and Mr Agrawal were arrested on May 28 on grounds of “circulating defamatory material” and “disrupting public order”. They were denied bail and when Mr Agrawal complained of hypertension in jail, he was taken to a hospital in Raigarh where he was kept chained to bed.
“This is an obvious attempt to silence all democratic protests in the state. It is clear that the state government does not want civil society to raise any kind of environmental or health issues,” a member of Jan Chetna pointed out.
On May 22, when Dr Sunilam, a former MLA, protested the forcible uprooting of farmers from 150 villages in Chindwara by the MP state government for the construction of the Adani Power Project, he along with another activist Aradhana Bhargava was attacked by the local goons. Sunilam suffered extensive injuries and both his arms were broken.
“This was a clear attempt to murder me and I was saved only because some farmers managed to protect me. Despite complaining to the local SP, the police arrived at the venue two hours later and instead of levying Section 307 IPC (attempt to murder), a simple Section 323 IPC (voluntarily causing hurt) was levied against the culprits,” said Mr Sunilan at a press meet.
Giving a background of the dispute, he said the MP government had passed a resolution in 1986 to establish a thermal power project in this area and had bought the land at `1500-`10,000 per acre but had sold this land in 2010 to the Adani group at `13.5 per acre. Farmers who have been farming in this area have been demanding better compensation rates, said Mr Sunilan.
Environment minister Jairam Ramesh has clarified that no environmental clearance has been given to Adani Power Project since it raises serious ecological issues including its impact on the Pench Tiger Reserve and on the Tiger Corridor passing through the area.
In another armed attack, anti-mining activist Nilesh Gaonkar, based in Goa, was beaten up by goons for forcing the state government to shut down an illegal mine in Cavern. Strongly condemning this trend, former Justice of Delhi high court Rajinder Sachar said he would raise these issues with the National Commission for Human Rights. Human Rights Watch and Amnsety India have also expressed serious concern about this trend.