Acquitted After Six Years' Jail, Tribal Woman Walks Out Only to Be Taken By Police; No Notice Given

Mumbai: After spending six years in jail and being acquitted in five cases, 30-year-old Parvati Sandmek was scheduled to be released today (October 30) from the Nagpur central prison. Her husband, Birju Pongati, stood at the prison gate, waiting to receive her and return to their hometown in the interior of Gadchiroli.

Around 2:30 pm, as Sandmek stepped out of the jail, a team of police, all dressed in civils, put her in a police jeep and took her away. No warrant was issued, no notice was given and no information was provided to Pongati or any other family members.

Sandmek, who belongs to the Madiya community and hails from a nondescript village named Madveli in Gadchiroli's Bhamragad taluka, was arrested for her alleged Maoist links in 2018. The police claimed that she belonged to the Bhamragad unit of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist).

She faced trial in five cases. The trial court acquitted her in four cases, and in one, she was convicted and given a ten-year sentence, only to be later acquitted by the Nagpur bench of the Bombay high court earlier this year.

Pongati, who had been at the Nagpur central jail since morning, told The Wire that as soon as Sandmek stepped out, a group of men and one woman put her in a van and said they were taking her away to Gadchiroli.

“I insisted that they provide me some legal document to prove that they were indeed police and that my wife was legitimately moved to a police station. But they refused,” Pongati claimed.

Pongati too faced incarceration for close to 13 years and was booked in over 50 cases. In August this year, he was released after being acquitted in all but one case. “One case is pending against me, but the court granted me bail,” he shared.

This was the first time the couple were to get together in over a decade.

As soon as Sandmek was taken away, her lawyer, Akash Sorde, approached the local Dhantoli police station, under which the Nagpur central jail falls. Sorde told The Wire that the police refused to file an FIR over Sandmek's “abduction”.

“Sandmek was released from jail, and it is officially documented, and she was whisked away in a jeep that looked like it belonged to police. But their whereabouts were not known. So, we demanded an FIR of her abduction be immediately filed. But the police refused.”

Sorde claims that he informed the Nagpur police as well as sub-divisional police officer Amar Mohite from Gadchiroli's Bhamragad taluka that if Sandmek did not return to the family by the end of the day, he would move a habeas corpus petition before the high court.

“Soon after, I began to receive calls saying Sandmek was only taken away as an act of warning her to not indulge in any Naxal [a term used interchangeably for Maoist] activities in the future,” Sorde claimed.

The police had set out to take Sandmek to Gadchiroli but after Sorde's official complaint letter to the Dhantoli police station and his statement to the police that he would soon move a habeas corpus petition, the Bhamragad police decided to let go of Sandmek.

Pongati claimed that by evening the police repeatedly began calling him, asking him to take Sandmek away.

At around 10:30 pm, Pongati reached the Bengali camp in Chandrapur district, around 151 kilometres from Nagpur jail, where the police was waiting with Sandmek.

“My wife is here and the police are recording her statement. They want me to take her away with me,” he told The Wire at around 10:30 pm.

When The Wire contacted Mohite, he denied the claims made by both Pongati and their lawyer Sorde.

“There are pending cases against Sandmek. We had no plans to take her away to another district,” Mohite first claimed.

Asked if a warrant was issued or a notice served to Sandmek before taking her in custody, Mohite claimed: “We didn’t arrest her, and detaining her just for questioning doesn’t need any legal documentation.”

Mohite's claims not only contrast the mandated process under law but also violate repeated judgments and strictures passed by the Supreme Court.

This is not the first time that someone charged for their alleged Maoist links has been released from jail and immediately taken away by police.

In 2011, as rights activist and lawyer Arun Ferreira was released from the Nagpur prison after four years of incarceration, he was picked up by another set of police.

Mohite, however, claimed that Sandmek's custody was needed as a non-bailable warrant (NBW) was pending against her in an old case.

When asked why an NBW was issued against her even when she was in judicial custody and this was well within the knowledge of both the police and the courts, Mohite urged this reporter not to publish this story.

“These people have several pending cases against them. Many times, the NBW gets issued and it remains pending, and we are expected to have the NBW executed as soon as the person comes out of jail,” he claimed.

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