By Nikita Jain
Civil society groups in Haryana’s Hisar have alleged and condemned the arrest of Dalit human rights lawyer and community rights activist Rajat Kalsan, who has also been subjected to police torture and casteist slurs.
According to a statement by the Students for People’s Democracy (SfPD), Kalsan was arrested by the Hisar Police twice on the same day, in connection with two separate cases.
A reputed lawyer in Haryana, Kalsan has been fighting cases on caste-based atrocities and has fought cases in India’s Khap-dominated regions, including cases of gang rapes, killings, and house burnings.
On 30 July, Kalsan was arrested while he was visiting an auto market. The Haryana Police, who had been tracking him, reached the location to serve him a notice, according to SfPD.
The lawyers in the case alleged that the police came in civilian clothes to serve him a notice, a pattern that is being observed in the arrest of many activists and lawyers.
“However, the actual picture was that a group of 20 to 30 police officers in plain clothes came to serve him a notice at night when he was in the market. No formal procedure was followed; rather, intimidation techniques were used against him,” Lavanya, activist and member of SfPD, told Maktoob.
The Haryana Police, in a statement, also alleged that Kalsan had become violent and disrupted their work, for which he has been charged with “obstruction of justice as he verbally abused them and injured one officer.”
This story was originally published in maktoobmedia.com. Read the full story here.