Human rights body slams Mamata on political prisoner status

Kolkata: A human rights organisation today accused West Bengal government of trying to amend laws in order to deprive political inmates of political prisoner status which was a deviation from its election promise. “The government is trying to amend section 24 of the WBCSR (1992) which defies criteria for determining a distinguished class of prisoners to be called ‘political prisoners’, by putting up a lame excuse that it is the Central government who wants that,” Association of Protection of Democratic Rights (APDR) general secretary Dhiraj Sengupta alleged.[caption id=“attachment_671975” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. AFP[/caption] APDR also urged members of the state legislature to raise their voices against “autocratic tendencies” of the Trinamool Congress regime. “The present TMC government has moved away from its election promise of releasing the list of political prisoners, and they are also behaving indifferently in its treatment with the court cases against these prisoners,” Sengupta said. The APDR also accused Trinamool regime of moving an SLP challenging the order and judgement of Kolkata High Court, where the petitioner Gaur Narayan Chakraborty along with Chatradhar Mahato, Sukhsanti Baske, Prasun Chatterjee, Smabhu Soren, Sagun Murmu and Venkatesh Reddy were granted the status of political prisoners. The Mamata Banerjee government, after coming to power, had announced the release of 51 lifers, including political prisoners, and decided not to oppose the bail of ailing CPI (Maoist) politburo member Sushil Roy following a mass petition, he said. However it had also promised to review cases against the political prisoners but didn’t do it, he alleged. PTI