Editorial
Mro's delayed release on bail
Degrading treatment of prisoners must stop
RANGLAI Mro has been freed on bail nineteen long days after the High Court ordered the move. In those nineteen days, he was kept confined to his prison hospital bed, in handcuffs and in clear contravention of all norms of law and civility. The question here is why it took so long for the indigenous activist to be released. For an answer, one has to go to the police authorities. They explain away the whole sordid episode by informing people that the HC order was sent to Bandarban judicial magistrate's court, from where it took such a long time to reach Dhaka, by post! Of course the police are not responsible for the delay, but we wonder why a court order must take so long to reach the appropriate authorities even assuming that the order was first sent to Bandarban before being forwarded to Dhaka. In this day and age, with all the advances in communication, to suggest that delays are normal is unacceptable.
Then comes the more serious matter of why Mro had to be kept in handcuffs even as he lay on his hospital bed. Perhaps conditions for him would have stayed that way if organisations such as Ain O Salish Kendra, National Human Rights Commission and Nagorik Uddyog had not drawn public attention to his plight. The humiliation meted out to Mro was accentuated by the round-the-clock presence of policemen around his hospital bed. It was a sight that did not present our laws, indeed our governance, in good light. Mro had already suffered hugely at the hands of the law enforcers, who had allegedly subjected him to inhuman torture after he was arrested in February 2007 on charges of illegal possession of arms. Mro was subsequently convicted and sentenced to seventeen years' imprisonment under the Arms Act. There are individuals and bodies which, however, believe that the indigenous leader was implicated falsely in the case. Overall, therefore, the Mro affair is one that is deeply troubling for the country. On the one hand, there is the alleged torture inflicted on him by the police. On the other, there is the matter of the handcuffs. Briefly (and here one cannot but agree with those who have come to Mro's defence), it was degrading treatment Mro was subjected to. It should not have happened.
It now remains the task of the authorities to explain why Ranglai Mro was treated the way he was, indeed why the inhuman act of keeping him in handcuffs in hospital was perpetrated. Our expectation is that in future such excesses, which border on the medieval, will be scrupulously avoided.
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