The mass arrest question

The fact of the matter is, the last series of blanket arrests, the unrepentant replay of the April version has been taken to the Court and the latter has responded to the civil rights concerns in right earnest. The very injunction order, mindful of a sensitive date the opposition had scheduled an agitation programme for, the extension of it by a vacation bench of the HC, and the transfer of the case to a regular bench for hearing on October 26, two days after the 50-day annual Court vacation ends -- all bear testimony to the highest court's sagacity and commitment to public welfare.

There are specific HC guidelines on application of section 54 of the CrPC, and although the final verdict is awaited on government's use of section 86 of the DMP ordinance, arbitrary arrests have gone on under some pretext or the other. This is unfortunate, albeit indefensible in a democracy.

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It is claimed by the government in defence of indiscriminate arrests that there are specific cases against those being held up. Assuming that arrests are being made on specific charges why were the innocents picked up then, something that is admitted to, if only indirectly but in such a nonchalant way that it betrayed a certain insensitivity to public welfare. Again, what are the specific charges against the arrestees and why were not these formally framed so far? These are legitimate questions exercising the public mind when hardened criminals with umpteenth cases against them remain outside the dragnet.

Mass arrests have raised serious questions about human rights violations, rule of law, allowing working space to the opposition, credibility and image of the government, and above all, the unconstitutionality of the whole approach. If not anything, it is in the greater interest of the government that it must eschew such a self defeating course.