Calcutta Telegraph: Guwahati: Tuesday,
April 11, 2017.
Meghalaya RTI
activist Agnes Kharshiing today came out in defence of special superintendent
of police (CID) N. Rajamarthandan, who was remanded in 14 days' judicial
custody, describing him as an honest police officer.
"He
(Rajmarthandan) is an honest officer. When he was posted in Meghalaya, he had
taken on the coal mafia. Once, dressed in civvies, he had caught policemen
taking bribes," Kharshiing, president of the NGO, Civil Society Women
Organisation, said after she met Rajmarthandan at the court today.
"Replying
to an RTI query can't be an offence. As a government servant, he was just
performing his duty. It was wrong to arrest him," the human rights
activist said.
Kharshiing
issued a press statement where she said Rajamarthandan had told her that
"nearly 65 persons were detained (in connection with the Silapathar
incident) when there was no evidence against them. The authorities have the
video (of the incident) and why are they not going through that?"
"He also
said that this system of hiding the truth was bad and he did not want his
children to ask questions later on why their father did nothing," she said
in the statement.
"Illegal
detention on denial of information on his part would have led to gross human
rights violations. His conscience would not allow it and that is what he told
us when we met him briefly as he was being produced in the court today,"
she said.
"It is
important to note that the RTI Act specifies that intelligence and security
organisations are exempted from the application of the act. However, it is
provided that in case the demand for information pertains to allegations of
corruption and human rights violations, the act shall apply to such institutions.
As a public information officer, he has done the right thing in giving the
information," she added.
Rajamarthandan
was today produced before the court of sub-divisional judicial magistrate-1,
Kamrup (metro), Sonamani Chanda, after the expiry of his two-day police remand.
A police
source said the IPS officer had fallen ill while in police custody at the 4th
Assam Police Battalion headquarters here last evening and was rushed to the
Gauhati Medical College and Hospital, where he was kept under observation till
this morning.
The source
said according to doctors, he was suffering from a mild cardiac problem.
"The
court today directed the jail authorities to provide him all medicines
prescribed by the doctors and give whatever medical care he requires,"
Rajamarthandan's counsel Bibaswan Deka told The Telegraph.
The senior
police officer was arrested on Friday on charges of divulging confidential
information in reply to an RTI application regarding the arrest of Nikhil
Bharat Bangali Udbastu Samanway Samitee president Subodh Biswas in the
Silapathar case.
A daylong
rally by the Samitee, demanding that the names of Hindu Bengalis be
unconditionally removed from the list of D (doubtful) voters, at Silapathar in
Dhemaji district had turned violent on March 6 when its activists clashed with
some supporters of the All Assam Students' Union (AASU).
Eight persons
were injured in the violence and the AASU office at Silapathar was damaged.
Subodh was
arrested on March 22 from a village in Bengal's North 24 Parganas. He and his
accomplice Subhash Biswas were produced before a Dhemaji court today and
remanded in judicial custody for two weeks.
The Samitee's
state president, Sahadev Das, and secretary Benimadhab Roy, who were arrested
from Siliguri on Saturday, were also produced in the Dhemaji court today and
remanded in 10 days' police custody.
Rajamarthandan
has been charged with criminal conspiracy and forgery for giving away
"confidential" information about the investigation into the
Silapathar violence, in response to an RTI query from the Samitee's general
secretary Ambika Ray, despite the CID being exempted from the purview of the
RTI Act.
Rajamarthandan
was heading the special investigation team formed to probe the Silapathar case.
Rajamarthandan,
a 2006-batch IPS officer of the Assam-Meghalaya cadre, has mostly served in
Meghalaya.
He was
repatriated to Assam in 2015 after a two-year stint in the CBI.
A doctor and
radiologist by qualification, Rajamarthandan was investigating the high-profile
Louis Berger case.
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