On 4 August 2003, in a brazen travesty of justice, Comrade Shah Chand and thirteen other comrades of Arwal-Jahanabad region were sentenced under fake TADA case to life imprisonment. One of them, Com. Madhav Chaudhary (62), who was still imprisoned passed away on April 8 in a hospital in Patna.
In April 1986, police opened fire on a peaceful assembly of landless people at Arwal and gunned down unarmed men, women and children, re-enacting the horror of Jallianwallabagh in post-colonial India. Brutal police repression and feudal violence were widespread in Bihar in the 1980s. This was also the period that witnessed the beginning of the rise of the BJP amidst an aggressive communal mobilisation. Members of Indian People’s Front and CPI(ML) like Comrade Shah Chand, Com. Madhav Chaudhary and others had become aspiration and assertion for peace and harmony, dignity and justice.
An old 1989 case against Shah Chand, Madhav Chaudhary and others were revived under TADA and in August 2003 the Jahanabad TADA court convicted thirteen comrades and sentenced them to life imprisonment.
