On 2nd of June this year, the visitors of Savera cafe and other bystanders at Fraser town were witness to abrupt police brutality on some common people trying to raise awareness about the ongoing genocide in Gaza. It was a lazy Sunday evening like most others with people going about their usual errands. Smack in the middle of it, the Bengaluru police under the Pulikeshinagar police station, brutally mounted assault and detained around 14 individuals merely for gathering in the area to engage in conversations with people regarding what may be easily dubbed as the biggest attack on human rights the world has seen in this decade. Evidently, it did not go down well with the ruling Congress government in the city. Hence, such police high-handedness was sanctioned for something that falls well within the ambit of the right to assemble peacefully under article 19 of the Indian constitution. While the detention process is mandated to be filmed by the police continuously to prevent any police atrocity, two protesters who were sloganeering from inside the police van were punched some 20-30 times repeatedly by two plain-clothes policemen. When another person tried to intervene she was slapped right across the face by one of these policemen. The manhandling was followed by a 5-hour long detention in Pulikeshinagar police station. Due to the police torture, one of the detainees suffered a concussion and had to be taken to a hospital from the police station. An FIR was lodged by the police on 14 people invoking sections 149, 188, 283, 290, and 291 of the Indian Penal Code. Funnily enough, one of the detained persons was merely running some errands in the area when he was picked up forcibly by the police. The news of this incident was carried by many media houses as well as progressive organisations who came up publicly with statements of solidarity. However, the ordeal was yet to end. As the protesters who were brutalised by the police lodged a medico-legal case about it at Victoria hospital, a second retaliatory FIR was lodged by the Pulikeshinagar police station, this time invoking sections 506, 34, 504, 332, and the non-bailable section 353 of the IPC. So, the police were not just content with trampling on people’s fundamental rights, but also turned vindictive on facing the slightest legal challenge to their misdeeds. Meanwhile, comradely solidarity was shown by civil society and a delegation of activists went and met the DCP East to submit a memorandum appealing for quashing of the FIRs and an inquiry into the matter. The appeal to quash the FIRs was completely evaded by him while an independent investigation was promised. It remains to be seen whether that promise materialises. In this particular case, the DCP showed the courtesy of granting an audience chiefly due to two factors- firstly, the news of police brutality on peaceful campaigners had already grabbed a lot of eyeballs, secondly, the detainees were mostly students and faculty members including a faculty from NLSIU, Bengaluru. While custodial torture and custodial deaths in extreme but not infrequent cases are normal for the Karnataka police when it comes to handling people coming from socio-economically backward sections, direct assault on urban petty-bourgeois intelligentsia caused a face loss for the police baring the class-bias inherent within the police force.
One must dig deeper into this vicious police attack in a Congress-ruled state at a time when Congress is being projected as the benign, pro-people alternative to the fascist RSS-BJP. Since Israel mounted a renewed genocidal attack on Palestine, the Karnataka government has consistently shut down all kinds of solidarity protests in the city. FIRs have been slapped on people for doing a campaign on MG road and for doing silent walks on Church street holding watermelon posters. The city police has even gone to the extent of shutting down film screenings, poetry sessions, and discussions on the Palestine situation. The disproportionate measures stand in sharp contrast with the verbal gymnastics by the Congress Working Committee which reiterated its long-standing support for the rights of the Palestinian people to land, self-government, and to live with dignity and respect in October last year. This is where the manifold economic ties between Israel and Karnataka government come into the picture. Despite a seemingly progressive stand taken by the CWC, the Congress government had to ensure zero dents on ‘ease of business’ with Karnataka exposing their base hypocrisy. Recently, a joint venture of Adani firm with Elbit systems- a weapon manufacturer from Israel, heavily responsible for the Gaza genocide, started in Bengaluru under the name of ‘Vignan technologies’. This is of course one of many.
The other underlying issue related to this episode is the 2022 police order that confines protests to Freedom park in Bengaluru. It was one of the main tools to usher the brutality on the people campaigning for Palestine as well. This reactionary order deems every protest as illegitimate if it is carried out anywhere other than a designated area within the city irrespective of its remoteness from the place of concern. For the past two years, this order has been used to shut down protests by farmers, workers, students, and civil society activists. Recently, more than 50 workers of Victoria hospital were detained by the police for protesting their abrupt termination by the Victoria management. Now, while the article is being written, this order is being used against workers of Prism Johnson Ltd. RMC division who are protesting the illegal closure of the plants which has thrown more than hundred workers out on the streets. Despite a facade of liberal democracy and a narrative of social justice, this government has failed on count of providing even the fundamental right to protest to its people. This order which was passed during the BJP regime and is being upheld by the current congress government, on one hand ensures a sanitised image of the city making it conducive to foreign and domestic investments. On the other hand it takes away the key factor that enables a protest to become a concern for the ruling classes- the element of visibility. Today if one walks around Freedom park during a protest, they would find multiple BMTC and police buses parked in a barricade formation around the park to ensure that the protest remains invisible to the general public. Despite Congress coming to power riding on promises of restoring democracy, the situation on ground is yet to change. Rather the current regime is using this order to their utmost advantage, shrinking the space for democratic movements within the city. With the intensification of economic war on the working classes, every semblance of democratic rights is being stripped by the state. Since last year, the Right to Protest coalition has taken up a movement to revoke this anti-people order in Bengaluru. As more and more cities join the ranks of Delhi, Bengaluru etc. there is a pressing need to fight this unitedly otherwise, freedom will not even be available inside Freedom park.
