While 27 prisoners who have completed 14 or more years were being released, six rural poor activists from Arwal - Comrades Jagdish Yadav, Churaman Bhagat, Arvind Chaudhary, Ajit Sau, Laxman Sau, Shyam Chaudhary - who have been in jail for more than 22 years are left out!
They are the surviving members of the fourteen comrades who were convicted under TADA in 2003 in a blatant travesty of justice. Six of these TADA prisoners out of fourteen - Comrades Shah Chand, Madan Singh, Sohrai Chaudhary, Baleshwar Chaudhary, Mahangu Chaudhary, and Madhav Chaudhary - have already died in prison.
Only one of them, Comrade Tribhuvan Sharma was released by the High Court in 2020. Thre is no judicial obstruction in the way for the release of rest of the prisoners, still, three years have elapsed since then, one more TADA inmate passed away in jail, and now this selective release of prisoners has inflicted more injustice on these victims who have already spent more than two decades of their lives in the jails of Bihar.
The policy of release of prisoners must be fair and transparent. Release all the #TADA14 inmates. Release all the oppressed poor people who have been locked up unfairly under the prohibition act in Bihar.
