The Daily Beast
83-Year-Old Indian Priest Slammed in Jail on Trumped Up Terror Charges
Noah Seelam/AFP via GettyThis story was produced in partnership with Coda Story.On the evening of Oct. 8, Father Stan Swamy took a break from watching TV and came down to the ground floor of Bagaicha, the Jesuit community center he founded in the eastern Indian town of Ranchi, Jharkhand. The 83-year-old priest and social activist was chatting with colleagues when an SUV pulled up outside.Four officers from the National Investigation Agency, India’s counter-terrorism task force, burst into the room—one of them holding a gun. Six more stood outside, and another police vehicle waited about 200 meters away. The officers spoke quietly to Swamy, seized his mobile phone and asked him to pack a bag.A colleague asked for an arrest warrant, but none was presented.The next morning, Swamy was driven to Ranchi airport and put on a two and half hour commercial flight to Mumbai, where he was remanded into custody by a special NIA court until Oct. 23. The agency filed a 17,000-page charge sheet on the same day, accusing him of links to the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist), which the Indian government views as a terrorist organization.Swamy, who was detained under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), is the oldest person to be accused of terrorism in India. To him, the arrest came as no surprise. Police had raided his residence in 2018 and 2019 and confiscated his laptop, tablet, mobile phone, a hard drive, some thumb drives, CDs and documents.As a prominent human rights campaigner who has spent decades fighting for the rights of marginalized and indigenous people (Adivasis), Swamy was the latest arrest in a sprawling 2018 case that has seen 16 human rights activists accused of being in league with the CPI (Maoist).Maoist fighters and Indian forces have engaged in conflict in central and eastern India for five decades. More than 12,000 people have been killed in the violence in the past 20 years. The rebels say they are fighting for the rights of indigenous people and landless farmers in the mineral-rich region, but the state regards them as outlaws and violent extremists.Among the individuals arrested in the 2018 case under the UAPA, a broadly worded antiterrorism law that gives the authorities powers of investigation and detention, are a prominent scholar of India’s caste system, a professor of linguistics and an 81-year-old poet. All have one thing in common: they have spent their lives campaigning for the rights of so-called low-caste Hindus, minority Muslims and other vulnerable Indians. All have been repeatedly denied bail and are accused of conspiring with banned Maoist militants to incite unrest. All deny the charges.Twitter Helps India’s Nationalist Government Block DissentThe detentions are linked to clashes that broke out on January 1,…
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