The Fight Goes On

Prashant Rahi was arrested on charges of being a Maoist leader. Out on bail, he speaks of prison life, Anna Hazare, and much else

DELHI ~ Political activist Prashant Rahi is out of prison after nearly four years. But he still misses the lunatic—a man who had cut his mother into pieces—with whom he shared an isolation ward in Uttarakhand’s Haldwani sub-jail soon after his arrest. “I grew fond of him,” says Rahi. “I used to talk to him for hours, and I think it calmed him down so much that it almost made him forget his past.”

That was in 2007. Two years later, Rahi spent a night in the same ward after being brought there for a court appearance. And he met the man again. “They were taking him for shock treatment to Banaras,” recalls Rahi. He never heard of his former ward-mate again.

Rahi is currently in Delhi, on his way to Mumbai, to join his daughter Shikha who works as an assistant director on film projects. He moves around with swiftness, as if he is in a hurry—which he is. He drinks tea in a jiffy, takes a bath in no time, and gets talking again. Perhaps a jail term does that to you.

Rahi was arrested, he says, on the afternoon of 17 December 2007 by policemen in plain clothes along the Dehradun-Rishikesh highway. He was shifted from one place to another, and interrogated by a string of police officers and intelligence sleuths. They kept asking him about Maoist activities in the state, sparing no effort to obtain answers, not even brutal torture, he says. “It was in front of me inside a building of the Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) in Haridwar that all evidence produced against me was constructed,” he claims. On the third day of his detention, Rahi claims a senior intelligence officer congratulated him, for they had decided not to kill him in an ‘encounter’, but produce him in court. It was five days later that he was officially shown as arrested—on charges of being a Maoist leader.

The court hasn’t found any evidence of what he was accused of: training villagers for combat in an Uttarakhand forest. Yet, even after he was granted bail by the court, it took a month for the prison authorities to release him.

Rahi’s views on Maoists, though, remain as vocal as ever. “The Maoist movement has become a major tour-de-force in the country now. And it is because of the policies of the Government and repression of people’s movements. So much so that even an apolitical person is now forced to take a stand,” he says, alluding to the recent Anna Hazare phenomenon. “The Anna Hazare movement is complex, but we need to take a healthy stand on it. I think Arundhati Roy’s stand needs a little refining; it was slightly reactionary, I think,” he says. To back his argument, Rahi cites the example of ordinary prisoners in jail who would never watch news. “But Anna Hazare created so much tempo that even prisoners were glued to Doordarshan news in the evening.” 

His prison experiences have taught him a lot, Rahi says, try as he did to make the most of his time in detention. He learnt Garhwali, for example, from a person convicted on charges of domestic violence. And he met some real literature lovers in jail. One of them even gave him Che Guevara’s biography to read. By and large, he read whatever he could, including Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger.

Another learning was the rich-poor divide behind bars. It was much deeper than he thought. “If you are rich,” he says, “there is nothing you cannot do inside jail.” Towards the end of 2010, he clashed with a notorious criminal, Sunil Rathi, who had been harassing him within prison premises. One night, he was attacked from behind so badly that his ribs broke. He was allowed an X-ray examination only two weeks later.

Rahi also speaks of how Supreme Court guidelines on handcuffing prisoners are flouted all time. “All of us would be handcuffed except one person,” he says. “And you know who that person was? Sunil Rathi.” It was unjust, and he made an issue of it. Another cause Rahi took up was a fight against the bizarre practice of not allowing shoes or socks inside prison cells; jail authorities in Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh consider these holy places since they believe Lord Krishna was born in one such cell.

In Dehradun jail, one day, Prashant Rahi had to share his cell with seven police officers arrested in the infamous Ranvir fake encounter case. One of them happened to be the sub-inspector who, Rahi says, had manufactured evidence against him during his illegal detention. They got talking.

“He told me, ‘Rahiji, humne career mein jaana hai ki jo accha kaam karega, woh kahin nahi pahunchega’ (I’ve realised in my career that whosoever does good work won’t reach anywhere),” Rahi recalls.

After his jail term, Rahi says, he now looks at life from a new perspective. “I had reached a dead end in my life; the State has opened a new gate for me,” he quips. Away from his karmabhoomi, as he refers to Uttarakhand, Rahi hopes to finish work on a project related to the popular history of India. And then he intends to do what he has done all this while: get involved in people’s struggles.

As we part, Rahi refuses an offer of another cigarette. “You know, I smoked a lot while they were torturing me—to focus my mind away from the pain. Now, there is no need. I get relief from all this talking I’m doing with you.” Catharsis.

evidenceMaoistPrashant Rahi