Professor arrested for Facebook post about beef eating rights
- by Ramsha-Rizwan
- May 27, 2019 19:27
Jeetrai Hansda who is a professor at the Government School and College for Women, Sakchi, in Jharkhand was arrested on Saturday for a Facebook post that he wrote two years ago.The arrest was made for a complaint filed against him in June 2017 for a Facebook post about “Beef-eating” rights of his tribal community .
Hansda’s lawyer said that he was only asked to appear in the police station and wasn’t arrested back then. He was arrested on May 25,Saturday and till now continues to be in police custody. Hansda’s anticipatory bail has been rejected.
Hansda is an Adivasi activist and hails from a tribal community himself.The Facebook post asserted on his community’s right to eat beef and ceremonial cow sacrifice and talked about their democratic and cultural rights .The post also included the unwillingness to follow Hindu customs and opposition to India’s laws on eating beef and the tradition in his community to consume peacocks, the country’s national bird.
The FIR lodged againt him at the Sakchi police station in Jamshedpur, stated that Hansda was booked under sections 153 (A), 295A, 505 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) for “insulting religious feelings and attempts to promote enmity between groups of people”.
Hansda’s wife Mahi Soren told HuffPost India that the a day or two after Hansda posted the Facebook status there were two complaints were filed against him — one at the Sakchi police station and the other at the college where he is a professor.
“No one contacted us personally but the letter that was sent to the college was signed off by ABVP,” She said.Meanwhile,Dasmath Hansdah, the chief of Majhi Pargana Mahal, a body that works for the preservation of tribal traditions wrote to the vice-chancellor of Kolhan University. The letter attempted to educate the vice-chancellor about adivasi traditions that Hansda wrote about and against which the complaint was allegedly filed by the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) .
“Adivasis are citizens of India as well. We have a democratic right to follow our cultural and religious traditions like everybody else..”
The letter also asserted about not a single thing wrong with what Hansda had said in his Facebook post and the post being truthful representation of the traditions of the adivasi community.
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