Ajay TG granted bail, plans to make film on political prisoners
August 5, 2008. Click here for a background on Ajay TG, from Committee for Release of Ajay TG
1. Release News
2. Ajay’s future plans - prison diaries of a suspected Naxal
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Today the Judicial Magistrate (First Class), at Durg District Court in Chhattisgarh granted bail to Mr. Ajay T G, a film-maker and member of the State Executive Committee of Chhattisgarh PUCL, who was detained under the draconian law called The Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act 2005.
The Chhattisgarh Police failed to file the Charge Sheet in the case during the mandatory 90 days. After completion of 90 days on 2nd August, 2008, the lawyers moved bail application u/s 167(2) of the Criminal Procedure Code. The matter was heard today, and in the evening the Bail was granted to Ajay TG. However, he is likely to be released only tomorrow, because of technicalities involved. Instead of filing the Charge Sheet, the police took 10 days remand on 2nd August, 2008.
During the hearings, Adv K Bose Thomas (Former Member, State Executive Committee, CG PUCL), Adv Dalip Ingle, represented Ajay T G. Adv Sudha Bhardwaj (Member, State Executive Committee, CG PUCL), and Adv Mahindar Dubey, were also present in the Court, along with family and friends of Ajay TG.
The failure of the Chhattisgarh Police to file the Charge Sheet in Ajay TG’s case is to be viewed against the backdrop of concerted campaign where Ajay himself, and the CG PUCL have been claiming that he has been falsely implicated only to target human rights activists like Ajay TG, and also organisations like the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, which have carried on a systematic struggle for preservation and promotion of human rights in Chhattisgarh. PUCL would study the implications of the case, and seek further legal action.
The CG PUCL is of the view that the case of Dr. Binayak Sen (it’s General Secretary, and National Vice-President) should be reviewed by an independent agency, and subsequently withdrawn as the prosecution has, so far, not been able to establish its case, at all. It may be worth mentioning here, that the Director General of Police (DGP), Chhattisgarh, Mr. Vishwaranjan had met Ajay TG on 19th July, 2008, in person. According to the reports appearing in a section of the press, it appears that the State Government is contemplating withdrawing the case against Ajay TG. In that context, the meeting of the highest police official with Ajay TG, while in judicial custody, carries some significance.
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Prison Diaries of a Suspected Naxal - by Sreelatha Menon
Ajay TG, arrested on suspicion of being a Naxalite, plans a film on those who are jailed for no reason at all.
What does a film-maker do in jail? When it is Ajay TG, the jail becomes his muse, prompting to him stories about a man spending his time in jail for no reason at all, stories about 74 men like him in Durg jail who have been branded Naxalites.
For Ajay TG, arrested four months ago and released this week, the prison was a time to revisit the past three decades he spent in Bhilai since he left his village in Engandiyur in Thrissur district of Kerala as a 15 year old.
He came to Bhilai to join his father, who ran a petty business to keep afloat a large joint family back home. But he learned to wield the camera and worked for anthropologists like Jonathan Perry, who was researching on poverty amid industrialisation , and finally landed in jail after being accused of being a Naxalite.
Ajay TG was released this week after the Chhattisgarh police failed to gather enough evidence. The release was the culmination of a loud chorus of condemnation from film-makers like Adoor Gopalakrishnan and Mrinal Sen. It was a victory of illusion-makers as the Chhattisgarh police realised they were chasing an illusion.
As he languished in Durg jail and his parents and wife waited anxiously in Bhilai, he became the focus of a human rights campaign that crossed state and national boundaries and was previously seeking the release of Dr Binayak Sen, who has been in jail for a year on suspicion of aiding Naxalites.
The arrest was not wholly unexpected, says Ajay in chaste Malayalam from his home in Bhilai. That would have been the case had he been just a film-maker. “I am an activist first,’’ he says.
“I have not done a single film which was sponsored. I have created, at low cost, only what I believed in, with my wife editing them,’’ he says.
He knew he was in danger the day the police raided his house in January and took away his computer and field notes. The arrest came on May 5.
“I was never interrogated. They knew they had nothing against me,’’ says the former CPI worker and a member of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL). “Since the PUCL was being targeted under the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act, 2005, I knew something might happen,’’ he says.
Now it is time to go back to Drksakshi, the school he runs in a Bhilai slum near his house where he and his two friends teach and feed 25 children and link them to mainstream schools. It came out of his tryst with the poverty of the people he had met as part of his research work.
“I could not endure the thought that I am unable to do anything for the people whose suffering I am documenting daily,’’ he says.
Ajay is thrilled that people like Adoor took up his cause and now he wants to create his first full-length feature film in Hindi, scripted of course by the walls of Durg jail.
Ajay doesn’t see the conflict between the state and the people of Chhattisgarh ending anytime soon. Bastar is rich in resources and the people are a hindrance for mining. So long as there is wealth underground, the government would like to sell it to anyone who can buy, he says.
And the Naxals? Are they rebels or desperados? Ajay will leave that for his cameras to tell.